Seagate Technology today announced that the National Security Agency (NSA) has qualified the Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drive for use in laptops and other computers deployed by U.S. government agencies and contractors for national security purposes.

With the NSA qualification, the Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drive meets one of the highest standards for securing sensitive information - the National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Policy (NSTISSP) #11. NSTISSP #11 defines requirements for a wide variety of products that "satisfy a diversity of security requirements to include providing confidentiality for data, as well as authenticating the identities of individuals or organizations exchanging sensitive information."

"The National Security Agency's qualification of the Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drive for U.S. government buy lists bears undeniable witness to the tremendous strength of the Seagate Secure portfolio of self-encrypting disk drives in protecting sensitive information for government, private enterprises and consumers alike," said Tom Major, vice president of Seagate's Personal Storage Business Unit. "With the soaring popularity of mobile computing worldwide, organizations and consumers need a simple, affordable way to secure consumer records, intellectual property and other sensitive information stored on mobile devices."

Lost or stolen mobile devices can cost companies millions of dollars in compromised intellectual property, lost business because of reputation damage, and remedies for violations of data privacy legislation, as well as expose consumers to the high risk of identity theft. According to a 2007 study of U.S. organizations by The Ponemon Institute, lost and stolen laptops and other mobile devices continue to be the most frequent cause of data breaches, with almost half (49 percent) of the incursions tied to these missing devices.

A 2008 study by the institute found that encryption for laptops is the most common and that "the use of encryption is driven now more than ever by the need to mitigate the consequences of a potential data breach: 71 percent rated this as the top reason for deploying encryption, up from 66 percent in 2007." Ponemon researchers concluded that ¡°the widespread use of encryption ¨C from laptops to file servers - has already prompted many organizations to begin planning strategically."

The Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drive is powered by Seagate Secure technology, a security platform that couples strong, fully automated hardware-based full-disk encryption with security-based software applications to deliver centralized encryption key management, multi-factor user authentication and other capabilities that help lock down personal computer and data center storage. Seagate Secure technology uses AES to encrypt all hard drive information transparently and automatically at full interface speed to prevent performance drags common among traditional software encryption products. The data security platform also makes it easy to repurpose and retire computers and hard drives without compromising sensitive information; all data stored on the drive is rendered unreadable by simply deleting the encryption key.

The Seagate Secure portfolio of products includes Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drives; Maxtor BlackArmor hard drives, delivering the strongest commercially available security for external storage; Barracuda FDE hard drives, internal 3.5-inch drives for desktop PCs; and Cheetah 15K.6 FDE, the world's first self-encrypting hard drives for mission-critical servers and storage arrays.