The companies who will decide to switch from Windows XP to Vista, despite the financial efforts involved in this move, will have nevertheless some important benefits.

One of them is the hard disk encryption technology, known as Bitlocker.

At Infosecurity 2006, Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy for Microsoft UK, assured companies that they would be able to dispose of the hard-disks without worrying about the data on them being accessed in any way.

"With Vista and Bitlocker, businesses will be able to throw hard disks away and be sure (they are) secure," News.com quoted Nick McGrath as saying.

BitLocker Drive Encryption is linked to a chip called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the computer's motherboard and it is aimed at preventing tampering with computers but it would also prevent people from downloading unlicensed films or media. This chip contains a key which encrypts and decrypts data using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the same standard used by the US government.

In early March, Microsoft declined rumors that Vista would contain backdoors which could be used by authorities to access the data on the hard-disks.

"The suggestion is that we are working with governments to create a back door so that they can always access BitLocker-encrypted data. Over my dead body," said Niels Ferguson, a developer and cryptographer at Microsoft, back then.

This statement was also confirmed by McGrath, who said that the system is 100 percent safe.

"The technology itself is 100 percent secure, we will not be producing any backdoors. There are no backdoors in Bitlocker technology."