Seagate's Encrypted Laptop Disk Wins NIST Approval

Seagate Technology announced that it has become the first manufacturer to win National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) approval. The approval was awarded to the company for its Momentus 5400 FDE.2 laptop hard drive with native chip-based Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption.

The company said that the drive uses AES to encrypt all hard drive information transparently and automatically. A noted advantage of using encryption is the ability to more easily reassign, recycle, or dispose of hard drives without having to worry so much about the potential exposure of sensitive data.

"The NIST stamp of approval exemplifies Seagate’s commitment to open standards that enable the widespread adoption of encrypting hard drives for laptops and other computers as the explosive growth of laptop PC puts more sensitive personal and business information at risk," said Tom Major, vice president of Personal Compute Business, Seagate.

The company also recently announced its new 1-terabyte family of drives. The Barracuda 7200.11 drives are available for desktops and the Barracuda ES.2 drives are available for enterprise storage solutions.