A recent survey of 517 IT practitioners conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) has brought some surprising findings to the fore. Primarily, a third of the professionals were uncertain if the use of self-encrypting hard disk drives (HDD) is better or worse than software-based encryption options, reports InformationWeek. Hardware encryption offers a number of advantages, one of which is its immunity from users who disable their encryption software without permission for better system performance.

The heart of the issue, according to Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, is that self-encrypting HDD faces an awareness challenge that it's costly and "unwieldy." The feedback from respondents with self-encrypting drive experience, says Ponemon, is that the hardware option is easier to deploy than full-disk encryption software. While it can be argued that getting self-encrypting hard disk entails addition capital expenditure, the availability of software alternatives means that not implementing encryption is completely inexcusable--especially when one considers the growing prevalence of laptop thieves.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek

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