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Encrypt Your Laptop for Top Security

There are different security controls mobile IT can put in place to secure the private information on laptops, including personal firewalls, passwords, recovery software (e.g. LoJack for Laptops) and end-user “Rules of Behavior” explained in corporate policy. However, none of these security controls come close to providing the security that self-encrypting drives offer. The hardware-based, […]

Written By

Laura Taylor

Apr 14, 2010

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There are different security controls mobile IT can put in place to secure the private information on laptops, including personal firewalls, passwords, recovery software (e.g. LoJack for Laptops) and end-user “Rules of Behavior” explained in corporate policy. However, none of these security controls come close to providing the security that self-encrypting drives offer.

The hardware-based, self-encrypting drive solution is so effective, that I’m fairly confident that this nascent market will become a huge trend and be widely adopted in the enterprise. Here I’ll outline the reasons why this strategy is so sound — and why software-based disk encryption is not — and will also provide an overview of the top vendors in this sector. Finally, I’ll also list the types of businesses and agencies that can benefit from this mobile security approach.

Software- vs. Hardware-Based Full Disk Encryption

Software-based full disk encryption is not actually new. It’s been around for a few years, and while it does appear to work, it has not been adopted on a large scale. Managing software-based full disk encryption at the enterprise level is cumbersome, which is one of the reasons that it has not been widely deployed. Many users refuse to use software-based encryption and disable it after it has been setup.

One reason that users disable it is because the performance for software-based encryption is sub-optimal. Disks that are encrypted by the software have much slower throughput than disks encrypted by the hardware.

Read the rest at Enterprise Mobile Today.