Insider Brief
Western Digital announced that its new Ultrastar UltraSMR hard drives integrate NIST-approved post-quantum cryptography, marking one of the first deployments of quantum-resistant security in production storage infrastructure for AI-era data systems.
The company said the new drives are designed to defend against “harvest now, decrypt later” threats and firmware-level attacks by using ML-DSA-87 code signing, dual-signing with RSA-3072, and quantum-ready key management infrastructure.
The PQC-enabled Ultrastar DC HC6100 UltraSMR drives are currently being qualified by multiple hyperscale customers as enterprises prepare for long-term cryptographic risks tied to future quantum computers.
PRESS RELEASE — Western Digital Corporation (Nasdaq: WDC), the storage foundation of the AI-driven data economy, today announced a significant step in next-generation infrastructure security with the integration of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) into its newest high-capacity Ultrastar® UltraSMR hard disk drives. As AI infrastructure evolves from compute-centric deployments to data systems that persistently retain information across every inference, training run, and interaction, the durability and security of that data becomes foundational, not optional. These drives are currently in qualification with multiple hyperscale customers, reflecting strong early interest in quantum-resilient storage architectures.
