Toshiba will soon debut a series of hard drives that can automatically erase or prevent access to their own data should the drives end up in the wrong hands.
The company’s new self-encrypting drive family will include a new feature that detects if the drive is connected to an unknown and undefined computer or other system. If so, the drive can either securely wipe all of its data or just deny access to that data. Customers can apply the feature to specific data on the drive and choose how and when to render the data indecipherable, according to Toshiba.
The drives are designed to provide an extra layer of security, especially for corporations, government agencies, and other organizations that need to adhere to certain security and data privacy requirements. The security technology itself is built on the “Opal” specification from the Trusted Computing Group, which dictates certain requirements for data protection in enterprise environments.
#15 the main proof that they haven’t is that their enemies are still using these algorithms.
If the NSA could read all of the secret services secrets, or the secret service reads the CIA’s, or the army reads the navy’s etc – it would have leaked out by now.
Or alternatively the white house, secret service, CIA, army etc have already been taken over by NSA agents……
Its there to make it harder to recover your data when (not if, but when) your hard drive finally craps out.
Keep multiple backups with varying levels of access, from mirrors to secondary drives, to cloud based incremental backups, to off-line media.
If you want to have your data kept safe and secure, keep it away from a computer, or at least from the internet. (I have a “sneaker” net to get data to [but not from,] my really secure machine.)
No.
Mextli,
I actually don’t blame the corporations on any moral level. Corporations have one rule — make as much money as possible.
So, if virtually no security on credit cards makes the most profit but wreaks havoc in the lives of their customers, that’s what the corporations are going to do.
So, that’s why the government needs to force the corporations to do the right thing. But, conservative philosophy says that the government only CAUSES problems, never solves problems. i.e. the least government is the best government. So, they block all efforts at regulation or consumer protection.
I’m not wrong on any of the above, am I?
There is room for debate on how much security credit card companies take. My web browser has 256 bit encryption but my credit card has a 3 digit security code! In the age of high powered computers, that’s just sad.
I know the credit card companies monitor irregular charges but, by then, it’s too late. The Romanian mafia already has my identity! Yes, you can get the charges cancelled but that’s often just the beginning of the grief with identity theft.
A real consumer value added innovation might be to load the drive with random porn and then erase it prior to shipment.
That is about the only think consumers care about concealing from prying eyes. You can always argue that it wasn’t yours.
#12 AlanB – The Motion Picture Association of America supported the import ban into the US of integrated dual-well VCRs in the late 1980s & early 1990s. It’s interesting that your VCR/DVD integrated unit is having the problem with recording from the VCR to the DVD.
Questions and one comment: Does the unit even support recording from the DVD to the VCR? Can the DVD record as well as playback, or are both the DVD & videocassette devices both players? (This unit may be effected by the ban mentioned above.)
Sony is now the owner of an MPAA studio. Try a device from a manufacturer that doesn’t have an interest in an MPAA member.
@11, you dont’t have to worry about back doors in TrueCrypt because it’s open source. That means anyone can download the code, examine it for anything suspicious, recompile it, etc.