The IEEE Standards Association is a group that develops consensus standards through an open process that brings diverse parts of industry together.

On a press release, IEEE announced the approbation of two new standards regarding the encryption of data on computer hard drives and other storage devices:

• IEEE 1619 "Standard for Cryptographic Protection of Data on Block-Oriented Storage Devices", addresses data storage on disk drives
• IEEE 1619.1 "Standard for Authenticated Encryption with Length Expansion for Storage Devices", deals with data encryption on enterprise-class tape drives

According to IEEE, these new standards will improve the security of data storage technologies to protect sensitive data in any field, like financial transactions, third-party storage of corporate data, military operations, healthcare information etc.