14 DAY TRIAL // Fujitsu's upcoming generation of hard disk drives will come with remote control capabilities as well as with an extra layer of data protection. The announcement was broken today by Phoenix Technologies and Fujitsu Electronics in a joint press release.
According to the report, the upcoming 2.5" 7,200RPM SATA hard disk drives will be equipped with the Phoenix FailSafe technology. The company claims that any laptop or notebook owner will be able to remotely disable the Fujitsu Full-Disk-Encryption (FDE) drive should the mobile device get stolen or lost.
"Fujitsu's new FDE technology delivers the industry's strongest security method for mobile computing, while preserving a high level of performance", said Joel Hagberg, vice president, marketing and business development, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc.
The new technology aims at minimizing the damage caused by the loss of a notebook with sensitive information. The FailSafe technology also allows users to remotely protect and encrypt the stored information, but at the same time plays a key role in locating and recovering the stolen or lost notebook.
"Our encryption capabilities ensure data on the disk drive is inaccessible to unauthorized users if a laptop is lost or stolen. By enabling users to remotely disable, enable or securely erase the drive in a laptop, the Phoenix Failsafe solution provides an added level of protection to further prevent any confidential information from being compromised", Hagberg continued.
According to Phoenix executives the FailSafe technology would let the legitimate notebook owner track, disable and even erase sensitive information stored on the Fujitsu drive. The technology relies on the FailSafe agent software that comes pre-installed on the disk.
"In the event of laptop theft, if the FailSafe agent pre-installed on the Fujitsu FDE HDD product is removed by the computer/data thief, the authorized owner will be able to remotely re-install the FailSafe agent in the compromised system and take further steps to ensure protection as well as recovery of the data on the laptop", said Surendra Arora, vice president of business development at Phoenix Technologies.
Intel is currently working on a similar technology called the Anti-Theft-Technology. However, the software developed by Intel will be added directly to the BIOS chip, rather than installed on a storage medium.