Contributing Editorial: Seeing Is Trusting — Trust In Optical Storage

By Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates

Optical discs are a major source of entertainment content and also a popular way to share, transport and back up data files. Security of optical discs has been problematic with inconsistent approaches to data encryption. News reports show the vulnerability of unprotected content on optical discs being compromised when discs with sensitive data are lost or stolen.

Putting Trust into Storage Devices

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is creating specifications for data storage devices with on-board encryption. The embedding of the encryption key within the storage device provides good data protection since the encryption key never leaves the storage device. Several hard disc drive products from Seagate Technology, Hitachi Global Storage Technology and Fujitsu incorporate on-board data encryption for laptops and even PCs. Encrypted laptop hard disc drives prevent access to the data on the drive if the laptop is lost or stolen. Efforts are underway to add such on-board data encryption to other storage devices such as magnetic tape, flash memory and optical discs.