Toshiba tees off 2013 with self-encrypting drives
Toshiba has announced four high-security families of drives for enterprise users.
The self-encrypting SAS and SATA drives (SEDs) were announced by Toshiba on Sunday. They use cryptographic technology to secure drives quickly against improper access and are designed for organisations that place a premium on data security.
"System administrators can help to better secure sensitive data by using encrypted storage devices," Scott Wright, product manager of Toshiba's storage products business, said in a Toshiba statement (PDF).
"Toshiba's latest eSSD and mobile HDD SED models provide the advanced security features companies need to properly sanitize SSDs in server and storage subsystems and ensure the security of private data on HDDs in mobile and desktop PCs to help prevent costly data breaches."
The PX02AMU and PX03ANU SATA multi-level cell SSDs can use ATA Enhanced Secure Cryptographic Erase (SCE) to delete data and range in capacities between 55 and 480GB. Companies with larger storage needs can opt for the PXO2SMQ/U drives, which range from 200GB to 1.6TB of capacity.
The SCE technology regenerates the drives' encryption key, which locks up all previously stored data. "This allows SED storage devices to be quickly and securely sanitized before re-allocation, redeployment or retirement," Toshiba said in a statement.
For mobile and desktop PCs the company has produced the MQ01ABU***W series, which ranges from 250GB to 500GB. Along with SCE, the drives support Toshiba's technology that lets data be automatically erased "if an unexpected host attempts to access the HDDs or if a defined number of authentication failures occurs", Toshiba said.
Sample shipments for the SATA eSSD drives are expected to go out in January while the rest of the drives should begin shipping within the first quarter of 2013, Toshiba said.
Prices were not disclosed.