Trusted Drive Manager (TDM) Overview

Description:

Wave Trusted Drive Manager (TDM) provides management functions for Trusted Drives. TDM enables the security of hardware-based Data protection.

TDM prevents data access by unauthorized persons
TDM protects data in the case of a lost or stolen PC or a lost or stolen hard drive

TDM manages the hardware-based security functions of Trusted Drives. Trusted Drives have data encryption embedded in the drive hardware. This ensures that all data stored on the drive is encrypted all the time. TDM ensures that only authorized users can access encrypted data when drive locking is enabled.

The Trusted Drive security must be initialized to activate drive locking. An uninitialized Trusted Drive functions as a standard ATA drive. When Trusted Drive security is initialized, drive locking can be enabled or disabled. The default state of initialization is drive locking enabled. The behavior of an initialized drive is as follows:

Drive Locking enabled:

The Trusted Drive will not boot unless the user enters the correct username and password into the pre-boot authentication console.
If the drive is plugged into another machine as a secondary drive, data on the Trusted Drive cannot be read. All the data, including the file system is fully encrypted.

Drive Locking disabled:

Drive data can be read by anyone who has platform access.
Drive data can also be read if the drive is plugged into another PC as a secondary drive.

TDM provides the following drive administrator capabilities:

Initialize drive security
Manage the drive security settings
Manage drive users
Perform pre-boot authentication

TDM provides the following user level capabilities:

Manage a user’s drive password
Perform pre-boot authentication

Caution: If drive security is initialized, it must be uninitialized using TDM, before removing/un-initializing the Wave ESC management software. Uninstalling Wave management software does not automatically deactivate the security functions of the drive.

Note: The TDM option is only available for systems equipped with Trusted Drive and TDM client software.

Article ID: TDM-001
Last Reviewed: October 8, 2009