A Study on Encryption Algorithms and Modes for Disk Encryption

Data storage devices such as disk drives and personal storage devices (PSD) such as flash disks are now widely used in everyday appliances. Data breaches have grown rapidly in the recent years due to compromised confidential data from storage devices. These trends forced standardization of encryption methods to secure storage devices. This paper provides a comparison review of existing encryption algorithms and modes of operations that are suitable for securing storage devices, mainly disk drives. The recent IEEE approved standard for encryption mode of operation, XTS will be evaluated in term of performance with different algorithms (AES, Twofish, and RC6). The performance of XTS mode with other modes of operations (LRW and CBC) will be explored. This detailed review and performance analysis will provide guidelines for storage devices designers to implement disk encryption.