As reports of the long list of enhancements seen in the upcoming Apple Mac OS Lion operating system are circulating, secure storage specialist Origin Storage has given a solid thumbs-up to the security features of the new OS.
"The FileVault 2 feature is a very welcome addition to the new Mac operating system, especially with support for external USB and Firewire drives. This is really good news," said Andy Cordial, Origin's managing director.
"The addition of an instant wipe facility is also to be welcomed. With large drives, the wiping of data - especially on a remote basis in the event of device loss - takes a finite period of time. By removing the encryption keys, the remote wipe is effectively as near-instant as you are going to get," he added.
According to Cordial, ever since he and his team started banging the encrypted drive drum some three years ago - and especially when Origin released its encrypted drive kits a the Infosecurity Europe 2010 show - customers have welcomed the availability of well-priced full disk encryption technology.
This has been the reason, he explained, why the kits - which provide PC users with all the essentials they need to upgrade a PC's existing drive to an encrypted unit, including a transfer cable and software - have been hot sellers.
This enthusiasm for encrypted data was also felt, says the Origin Storage managing director, at this year's Infosecurity Europe show, when Cordial and his team were showing off their Datalocker III range of multi-security factor portable encrypted drives.
The trend towards encrypted drives was highlighted, he says, by a survey conducted amongst show-goers by our colleagues over at DigitalPersona, who found that two-third of survey respondents at Infosecurity Europe 2011 held disk encryption as a key IT priority.
The survey (http://bit.ly/jrRTSr), he says, took in responses from more than 360 attendees at the show, and found that whilst large enterprises may have the resources to implement effective and comprehensive disk encryption on all devices, smaller organisations have traditionally reported difficulty finding encryption that is affordable and easy to implement.
And this, of course, he adds, is where Origin's Datalocker III series enters the frame, offering companies of all sizes access to high-capacity and secure portable storage with encryption technology that is further secured by a 6 to 32-digit alphanumeric passphrase that is entered directly on the device itself.
"With features that include a USB 3.0 interface for fast data transfers and support for Apple Macs, Windows and Linux platforms, the Datalocker III secures data using 256-bit AES encryption and comes in capacities of up to one terabyte," he said.
"This all-round flexibility makes it ideal for those companies that use Apple Macs with the new Lion operating system, and, of course, the drives will also plug into regular PCs on a hot-swap basis," he added.
"It's really good to see that our positive stance on encrypted drives over the last three years being mirrored by the industry, especially with the Apple Mac now featuring native support for encrypted drives."