Secure Storage Drives Give Sensitive Data at the Edge New Protection

• By Peter R. Kelley
• Jun 27, 2024

Emerging technologies and evolving mission requirements are driving significant expansion of sensitive data at the edge. A growing portfolio of systems -- from PCs to unmanned vehicles, drones and IoT devices -- are collecting, processing, and storing sensitive data.

To address this proliferation of insufficiently secured edge devices, Cigent has expanded their portfolio of secure storage drives with new form factors to provide urgently needed data protections against evolving threats that risk data integrity, including both physical attacks such as cloning and wiping, and remote attacks.

The newest Secure Storage drives have been developed for and with U.S. federal agencies, and include:

Secure Storage SSD BGA. Provides new hardware encryption protection that can be embedded in devices. Meeting automotive, and Air Force temperature requirements of -40° to 105°C for operation in extreme conditions, it offers effective protection for data for unmanned vehicles, IoT, OT, and other edge devices.

Secure Storage 2230. Provides protection of PCs and tablets. The 2230 drive supports new preferred drive configuration from leading PC manufacturers, including Microsoft Surface, Dell Latitude and HP EliteBooks. This solution provides NSA CSfC-certified pre-boot authentication (PBA) and full drive hardware encryption for modern PCs. Like the Secure Storage SSD BGA, Secure Storage 2230 meets automotive and Air Force temperature requirements, ensuring the drive can operate in extreme environments.

Secure Storage SD and MicroSD cards. Provide hardware-encrypted data protection with small form factors. Supporting Linux and Windows OS and meeting industrial temperature requirements, they provide flexible, robust protection for a variety of systems including PCs, tablets, OT, and unmanned vehicles, ensuring data security mission requirements.

In addition to the full drive encryption, the Secure Storage solutions can create hidden partitions to store the most sensitive data and allow remote erasure of data using a combination of crypto and full block wiping.

The solution also provides unparalleled breadth of hardware-encrypted secure storage devices that allow program managers to meet compliance mandates and ensure data remains protected. Protections have been verified by experts including NSA, NIAP, and MITRE, and are in use by many government organizations requiring the highest level of protection.

“With these additional storage devices, Cigent brings leading-edge data security and failsafe, certified data erasure innovation to environments such as military, homeland and extreme data sensitivity missions,” said John Benkert, Cigent CEO and co-founder. He said the expanded Secure Storage suite provides operators with a single portfolio and partner to ensure sensitive data at the edge is protected – against today’s threats and tomorrow’s, in the most sensitive and potentially hostile environments.

Benkert previously served 20 years in Air Force Intelligence and seven in the NSA and was honored with the National Scientific Achievement Award for technological innovations in data security.

Cigent storage can be configured and administered at scale through a management console and an efficient Command Line Interface (CLI) tool. Cigent and its ecosystem of device, vehicle, and system integrator partners support procurement, delivery and deployment requirements.