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Interoperability: Little Known Facts

The Other Specs: An SSD Is More Than Its Throughput
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Interoperability itself is something we suspect is only half-understood for the majority of people. You could introduce a new SATA or SAS drive into your existing storage infrastructure, and it would be interoperable with other SATA/SAS equipment on an interface level, sure. If you think this is the definition of interoperability, however, think again.

On-drive encryption is a good example of how misconceptions about interoperability can potentially create massive headaches. If a vendor wants to advertise its SSD as having full-disk encryption, it can solder an AES chip to the drive’s PCB and send it out into the world, but there are a lot of situations where that promise of encryption will go unfulfilled. Anyone with middling Google Fu or Bing Kwon Do can point you to any number of examples showcasing compromised hardware that boasted integrated AES encryption.

When an AES-equipped drive is hacked, the fault doesn’t lie with the algorithm. Instead, attackers will poke holes in the encryption’s implementation – how the surrounding software handles the encryption keys, for example. After all, the most elaborate lock in the world is useless if a thief knows the key is under the doormat.