Samsung, Dell provide data encryption for SSDs

Samsung Electronics on Thursday said it is boosting security on solid-state drives by bundling data encryption software with SSDs it ships.

The company is bundling software from Wave Systems' Embassy management software to encrypt data on its SSDs with storage ranging from 64GB and 256GB.

The drives with encryption software will be available from PC makers, Samsung said in a statement. Coinciding with Samsung's announcement, Dell said it would offer the self-encrypting SSDs with its Latitude line of laptops in the upcoming months.

SSDs are gaining popularity, particularly for use in laptops, because they consume less power and access data more quickly than hard drives. SSDs store data on flash-memory chips and are emerging as an alternative to hard drives, which store data on spinning magnetic platters. Adding encryption could protect laptop data and deter security breaches.

Full-disk encryption is already available for hard drives, but this is the first time it is available for SSDs, Samsung said. The software automatically encrypts information as data is stored on the SSDs.

Samsung claims that SSD performance is not affected by encryption because it has no moving parts.