Among the thousand of items at CES 2012 that have the bling and the pop, often the ones that have a quieter presence may end up being just as important. In this category is a product called DiskCrypt by Singapore based ST Electronics. What is DiskCrypt?The DiskCrypt is a hardware based encryption solution. It turns any 1.8” micro-SATA device into a removable and fully encrypt storage. The enclosure is the size of a 2.5” drive that fits into most of today’s notebooks.
If you have a brand new machine (with no OS installed) you would install DiskCrypt like you would a normal hard drive and then boot-up from it. Once authentication is done, DiskCrypt will than show up as a normal drive. You can then install your OS, Windows or Linux as you would normally. DiskCrypt does not work on a Mac. If you have an existing drive, you have to remove the current drive first. It goes without saying that before you do this you want to backup all your data. Then install DiskCrypt and go through the authentication process. Then using a cloning tool such as Aronis and a USB to SATA Bridge you reinstall the OS and Data. Unlike most software solutions DiskCrypt encrypts every sector, including temp files, and the boot sector without a lost in performance. It uses Nist approved AES encryption algorithm. The cryptographic module in use is FIPS 140-2 level 1 certified. DiskCrypt offers key strength of 128 and 225 bits. With the addition of the optional DigSafe KeyCrypt cryptographic token two factor authentication is available. There is a Master password which is provided to the administrator, who can use that to recover a lost user password. If the Master password is lost, your out of luck, there is no way to recover that. This also means that a good master password that is kept in a secure location is the key. If a password has to be changed that can be done at the time of authentication without any lost of data.
The DiskCrypt enclosure is $450.00. At that price this is clearly not a product that is being sold to consumers. If you are a business small or large and your data is being carried into the field on notebooks that are easily lost then $450 may seem like a bargain compared to the cost of letting that data fall into the wrong hands.