Today’s San Francisco Tech Support blog highlights great article by PC World on the value of secure drives over security software. I’m not sure if this is necessarily the case, however, it’s obvious that if your drive is separated from your PC (and in your possession) it will be more secure than left in a relatively public space. Until you lose it, that is. At which point, it becomes a whole lot less secure. Unless you have purchased a secure hard drive that is.

Which is why you need hardware-encrypted storage.

Unlike software-based encryption systems, secure hard drives lock out intruders at the hardware level, preventing anyone from seeing any part of the drive until they enter a secure password. This prevents hackers from using conventional software tools to circumvent your encryption.

Perhaps the two best products on the market at the moment for mall businesses are the notebook-friendly varieties. Internal notebook drives like the Seagate Momentus 5400 FDE.3 prevent your mobile PC from even starting without a password, making it virtually impossible to get to your data. External models like the Maxtor BlackArmor Portable Hard Drive let you add security layers to your mobile systems without retrofitting your laptop.

If you put all of your critical business data on a Maxtor BlackArmor drive, you can be reasonably sure that it will never find its way into enemy hands in readable form. Because when you plug in a the drive for the first time, you are prompted to create a secure password. From that point forward, the drive will be protected. Unplug it from your USB port, and it will use its last trickle of power to relock itself instantly. A thief will have a hard time getting inside - as will a professional data-recovery service - so whatever you do, don’t forget your password - and don’t store it on that drive!

For more info on security systems and for other IT support, contact: SanFranciscoTechSupport.com

PGP Corporation has become the first company to offer full disk encryption on a software-as-a-service subscription, which should bring the technology within the reach of more San Francisco / Bay Area small businesses.

Selling through Managed Service Provider Network channel partners enterprises will be offered PGP’s Windows or Mac Whole Disk Encryption software on a month-by-month ‘pay as you grow’ contract, with flexibility to increase or decrease according to needs.

The service includes the PC encryption software, a key recovery service, plus reports on the encryption status of each machine for compliance and auditing. Laptops using the software can only be accessed by providing a key, which means that should they be lost or stolen, hard drive data remains encrypted an inaccessible.

The costs themselves are comparable over a year to buying the software on a stand-alone basis, PGP admitted, but this removed the obstacle of deployment and ongoing management that has, up to now, put off many smaller enterprises with around 100 mobile users.

Deployment is probably the biggest advantage of the new model because it means that companies don’t have to commit staff and infrastructure to getting full disk encryption projects off the ground. Using either one of the appointed partners it should be possible to get the technology into a small enterprise within days or weeks, instead of months.

Lost laptops containing unencrypted data have become an almost routine way for enterprises of all sizes to lose sensitive data, a frequency IDC’s Charles Kolodgy was quoted by PGP as having recently described as “obscene”.

Monthly prices and volume discounts had yet to be confirmed  but were said to be in line with the annual per-seat prices already quoted for stand-alone use. This is about $160 per year.

Contact San Francisco Tech Support for more info.