Wave Cloud Service Manages Self-Encrypting Drives

As the number of mobile computing devices being used across the enterprise increases, self-encrypting drives (SEDs) are gaining value. After all, the probability that a mobile computing device will be lost or stolen is quite high.

The problem, of course, with anything to do with encryption is managing it. Most IT organizations don’t have systems management tools in place that are capable of managing encryption, which means they have to acquire dedicated infrastructure in order to deploy such a system.

What’s changing now, however, is the advent of cloud computing services for managing SEDs. Wave Systems today launched Wave Cloud, a service that is designed to manage SEDs that are based on the Trusted Computing Group’s Opal standard.

According to Brian Berger, executive vice president of marketing and sales for Wave Systems, Wave Cloud eliminates the need for IT organizations to invest in dedicated encryption management systems for SEDs. That’s going to be especially important going forward, says Berger, because Microsoft has made TPC and SEDs a foundation technology within Windows 8. Berger also notes that SEDs and TPM technology is increasingly becoming a standard element of most National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines.

While SED technology doesn’t protect data in motion, it does go a long way towards securing data at rest that is being stored somewhere. Increasingly, that place, like it or not, is on a mobile computing device outside the confines of the traditional enterprise.