Hardware-based encryption in hard drives appears to be the next must-have feature for business laptops. Fujitsu has joined on-the-market efforts by Seagate and Hitachi Monday with its new MHZ2 CJ Series that pairs the AES-256 (256-bit Advanced Encrypted System) cipher with a 7200-rpm drive in capacities from 80 GB to 320 GB with support for 3.0 Gbps SATA. The 2.5-inch drives, suitable for medium- and full-sized laptops, will ship in May 2008.

Drives that have encryption chips and firmware need have no information accessible that's not efficiently scrambled. An encrypted chipset allows these drives to offer full performance alongside strong security. If a laptop or external drive is lost, a password is typically needed that, if not available, prevents any access to the drive; the key isn't stored on the drive.

A good set of front-end security tools integrated with the drive provides the best experience, however, unless you like fiddling with BIOS settings. Such software can help guide you through creating a secure backup for the key you create, too.

On-board hardware encryption provides the gold standard for protecting data, and AES-256 is one of the strongest crytographic options in wide use. Seagate, in contrast, uses AES-128 (128-bit keys), but don't hold it against them: while AES-128 is theoretically far easier to crack than AES-256, current research holds that it would take thousands of years. Some outside the U.S. suspect AES-128 of other weaknesses, however, because the U.S. government requires 192-bit or 256-bit AES encryption for its "top secret" designation.

Full-disk encryption has a very cool benefit for ensuring that a disk that needs to be disposed of or re-used by another individual - or even sold - has its data rendered fully irretrievable. Just change the key on the drive, and the drive's data is gone forever. Fujitsu says its secure erase option takes "less than a second." (Backing up critical data on these drives is a related, and complicated problem!)

The additional cost of hardware encryption tends to be rather low, ranging from US$100 to $200, depending on the laptop maker, the drive's capacity, and the rotation speed. Expect that cost to drop rapidly in 2008. Some industry experts believe that hardware encryption will be a feature as ubiquitously requested as fingerprint recognition for business laptops by 2009.

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