HP Drive Encryption is a full disk encryption software that helps you protect your data at rest. It ensures the integrity of your sensitive business data on drives and enables safe, rapid re-deployment of devices. Read the article to get more to learn what is HP drive encryption.

What Is HP Drive Encryption? How Does It Protect Your Data?

It’s very easy for hackers to steal personal information from a user’s social media accounts and also drives. Where a password encryption [What is password encryption article here] protects your account’s information from being stolen, an HP drive encryption encrypts your disk’s data to keep it safe.

HP Drive Encryption is a full disk encryption software that helps you protect your data at rest. It ensures the integrity of your sensitive business data on drives and enables safe, rapid re-deployment of laptops, desktops, and workstations across physical, virtual, and cloud workloads.

How Does HP Drive Encryption Protect Your Data?

1. It helps you protect your data at rest by providing full disk encryption. This protects all data on the drive, regardless of file type or folder location. 
2. Plus, it also ensures hardware-based protection for all drive types—internally attached hard drives, externally connected removable hard drives, and USB storage devices. The solution is easily deployable and manageable and has a minimal performance impact.
3. It also encrypts the entire disk along with pre-boot authentication for login.
4. Enterprises or organizations use this where data security is essential and ensures that it would not be misused. 
5. It allows easy management of devices through a central policy store. It can handle all granular policies from BIOS to OS.

Who Can Use HP Drive Encryption?

• Most HP business platforms and industry standards like Microsoft® eDrive®, IEEE 1667, ATA security mode commands, and TCG Opal 2.0.
• Microsoft BitLocker® Device Encryption as a System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) client to enhance information security on managed PCs.
• Also supports new platforms like HP EliteBook 725 G2 and HP EliteBook 840 G1 Notebooks
• Dual-drive (HDD+SSD) configurations, new 4Kn Advanced Format drives, and Solid State Drives (SSDs).
• Boot from a USB flash or hard drive is a feature that allows you to boot your laptop from a USB flash drive if the system image is encrypted.

How Does HP Drive Encryption Work?

By following these steps you can set up Drive Encryption on HP drives:

1. Firstly, the user needs to create an encryption key that they need to remember or write down with care as it will be used for unlocking. 
2. This key file can be protected with a password to prevent unauthorized access. This file will contain the encryption/decryption algorithm, which can be used to encrypt or decrypt files on a drive through Drive Encryption software.
3. You will not need the file after the encryption is complete. This is because HP Drive Encryption automatically generates an encryption key. That encryption key encrypts and also decrypts files on the drive. 
4. This key is present in a hardware encryption module present in the drive itself. This key randomly generates, encrypts with HP Drive Key, and stores itself in the drive. 
5. Anytime data is written or read from the drive which has encryption, its contents automatically decrypt. It uses the encryption/decryption algorithm contained in the key file. It encrypts again before sending it out to any other drive. 
6. This ensures that only authorized users can decrypt data on the drive.

Elements Of HP Drive Encryption

An HP Drive Encryption has the following elements,

HP Drive Key

This chip is present in the encrypted hard drive, which stores randomly generated encryption/decryption keys.

HP Spare Key

It is a separate file that you must create and store in a safe place. This allows the encrypted drive to unlock after a system reset or power cycle. Once you create it, you can only use it on the same PC on which you built it. If your hard disk crashes and you need to replace it and it doesn’t have encryption enabled, this key file will allow you to decrypt and re-encrypt the drive.

Encryption Algorithm

The algorithm HP Drive Encryption uses ensures that data automatically encrypts when reading from the encrypted drive. In contrast, any new data read automatically encrypts using an automatically generated key before writing it out to any other drive.

Key Management

This software suite enables administrators to centrally manage and deploy security policies for their organization’s physical and virtual Windows-based systems. When you log on as an administrator, it automatically decrypts everything stored on the drive. 

If you don’t enter the correct password, access to your data is denied. The same thing happens if someone tries to reset or change your local account password. But except that they will not see anything as all files are encrypted.

How Do I Install HP Drive Encryption?

Running An HP Drive Encryption Application

After installing an operating system onto the computer, you will need to run the HP Drive Encryption application to create your encryption key and configure it to encrypt the drive.

HP Drive Encryption makes deploying laptops, desktops, and workstations across physical, virtual, and cloud workloads secure from data theft or breach with minimal impact on performance. It ensures the security of sensitive business data stored at rest, protected by hardware-based encryption keys. This offers better protection without sacrificing system performance.

Create HP Spare Key File

The HP Spare Key is a separate file that you must create and store in a safe place because it allows the encrypted drive to unlock after a system reset or power cycle. If your hard disk crashes and you need to replace it and the replacement disk doesn’t have encryption enabled, then this file will allow you to decrypt and re-encrypt the drive.

Share Password After Configuration

Once you have configured a drive, you can securely share it using a password with anyone who has a computer running Windows 7 or later operating system. You can also use HP SpareKey to create a USB key that allows you to access this encrypted disk from any other computer. This ensures data security as only those authorized by the administrator can access this data from any other computer after entering the correct password.

In simple words, if your laptop gets lost, a user who does not have authorization can not access your personal information as long as you have taken the time to protect your encryption key. Even if someone resets your local account password on the PC where Drive Encryption installs, the drive will remain protected unless they have your encryption key or you share it with them.

Conclusion

The encryption scheme employed by HP Drive Encryption ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive business data. It does not cause any performance slowdowns and allows full-disk encryption on devices.

The key file acts as a master password before providing the user with an automatically generated encryption key to encrypt and decrypt files on the drive itself. This ensures security without compromising system performance. Security administrators will find this software suite easy to deploy and manage across their IT infrastructure, reducing data loss and maintaining compliance standards in today’s business environment.