Seagate Technology has teamed up with encryption specialist WinMagic in order to provide enterprise-class security solutions for data-at-rest. The two companies will base the new security solution on their best technologies.

Seagate's Secure disk drive technology is a hardware-based full disk encryption system with bundled data security, that can be controlled via a programmatic interface. Moreover, it allows the user add its own software security applications to the ones already implemented. WinMagic's SecureDoc technology allows Seagate Secure-enabled disk drives to deliver additional data protection layers, while preserving flexibility and transparency.

"With a rapidly-growing enterprise commitment to data protection, customers are demanding management solutions that support a broad range of security-enabled endpoints," said Thi Nguyen-Huu, CEO of WinMagic Inc. "It is simply not feasible for large organizations to administer a discrete management system for each end-point security solution they deploy," Nguyen-Huu continued.

The upcoming security solutions will be first implemented into Seagate's Momentus 5400 FDE.2 notebook hard drive. All the security-related aspects will be managed via WinMagic's centralized application interface, called SecureDoc Enterprise Server (SES). It will also offer enterprise-class functions such as 'silent' software installation or interoperability with Active Directory.

"The combined Seagate and WinMagic offering will provide custodians of sensitive information with a highly secure, manageable data protection solution," said John Bedrick, Senior Director of IT Security, New Business Initiatives at Seagate. "While software-based encryption has some practical applications, hardware-based encryption and security provides a level of trust and performance not achievable by software alone. By teaming with WinMagic and other software vendors, we are able to offer to the market very robust data protection solution that is scalable and highly manageable. Our combined goal is to reduce or eliminate the risks associated with unnecessary data loss or data exposure from unprotected desktops, notebooks and other portable storage media."

Strong encryption is a key factor in a digital world ruled by mobile devices. More and more government agencies and health institutions report missing, lost or stolen notebooks with critical data stored in plain.