Shivaranjan.com

Lenovo has introduced fingerprint activated hard drive encryption into their Thinkpad notebooks, using this facility the user of a Thinkpad notebook can encrypt their hard drives with a touch of their finger. These notebooks will be mostly preferred by corporate users as they don’t want their confidential information to fall into the wrong hands incase the laptop gets stolen. This feature will be available in the Thinkpad Series 60 model range.
Silicon Valley News Report:
ThinkPad notebooks from Chinese computer-maker Lenovo Ltd., which already let the user log on with a thumbprint instead of a password, will now allow users to encrypt their hard drives at the press of a finger.

The company planned to announce the new security technology on Monday.

The program works with Utimaco’s SafeGuard Easy software, which has received certification from the U.S. government for purchase by its agencies, according to Clain Anderson, director of the company’s ThinkVantage technologies.

To unauthorized users, the encrypted hard drive will appear to be meaningless information.

The announcement comes amid growing concerns about data theft due to lost or stolen laptops.

Alarm rose in May when a laptop with information on more than 26.5 million military personnel was stolen from a Veterans Affairs Department employee. The laptop was recovered, and investigators said sensitive data had not been copied.

In a report released in September, the Commerce Department acknowledged losing 1,137 laptops since 2001, most of which had been used by the Census Bureau.

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