The other day Seagate announced some huge drives that now come with AES encryption and the first thing I got asked was...so "What does this mean for Bitlocker?".
Seagate's solution allows you to set a boot up password that use to unlock the drive.
The Barracuda FDE hard drive delivers endpoint security for powered-down systems. Logging back on requires a pre-boot user password that can be buttressed with other layers of authentication such as smart cards and biometrics.
Bitlocker is designed to provide a seemless user experience that is integrated with the operating system providing any means of authentication used by Windows. Bitlocker has the capability to escrow keys to Active Directory for recovery which is far better than each drive having an individual password. IF you don't use AD as a back end you can still back up your recovery key to your "Digital Locker" using Windows Ultimate edition. It also provides the ability to do a pre-boot pin if you want for an added layer of security, but it isn't necessitated to encrypt the drive like Seagate's solution. The down side is it is only available on certain SKU's of Windows Vista (Ultimate and Enterprise). So, If you are capable of running Bitlocker you are probably better served by it. If you can't run Bitlocker then a solution like Seagate's might be appealing as it is better than nothing.
Oh and I asked the BDE team if these two could be used in conjunction and while no one has tested this they thought it might.
Posted
Sep 11 2007, 03:43 PM
by
Josh Phillips
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