IEEE standards for encrypted storage

Numerous communications security standards - including IP security (IPsec), secure shell (SSH), and various forms of e-mail encryption - now exist to protect information in transit. However, businesses have come to realize that the mishandling of stored data - information at rest - is also a significant threat to them and their customers. Whether data is stolen, lost, or discarded, the results are the same: Information that should be confidential may no longer be. To address this deficiency, the IEEE Computer Society's Security in Storage Working Group (http://siswg.org) is developing Project 1619, Standard Architecture for Encrypted Shared Storage Media. P1619's goal is to enable the interoperable encryption of storage devices, provide methods for information owners to transfer key material, and facilitate product certification. The standard currently includes encryption at the physical level of disk and tape drives, and future efforts will extend it to objects and file systems.