U.s. Department of Commerce

Guide to Storage Encryption Technologies for End User Devices U.s. Department of Commerce

In today?s computing environment, there are many threats to the confidentiality of information stored on end user devices, such as personal computers, consumer devices (e.g., personal digital assistant, smart phone), and removable storage media (e.g., universal serial bus [USB] flash drive, memory card, external hard drive, writeable CD or DVD). Some threats are unintentional, such as human error, while others are intentional. Intentional threats are posed by people with many different motivations, including causing mischief and disruption and committing identity theft and other fraud. A common threat against end user devices is device loss or theft. Someone with physical access to a device has many options for attempting to view or copy the information stored on the device. Another concern is insider attacks, such as an employee attempting to access sensitive information stored on another employee?s device. Malware, another common threat, can give attackers unauthorized access to a device, transfer information from the device to an attacker?s system, and perform other actions that jeopardize the confidentiality of the information on a device.