India, May 21 -- Opening thoughts. WD, formerly Western Digital, has done something rather interesting. They've made the industry's first post-quantum cryptography (PQC) hard drives. These derives, called Ultrastar UltraSMR, are meant for AI compute focused infrastructure. They integrate what WD says is NIST-approved quantum-resistant algorithms, the idea being to make the firmware and device level security features more robust for enterprises. The threat perception has mapped quantum-era risks of "harvest now, decrypt later" (HNDL) attacks, which this methodology aims to thwart.

Contrary to general opinion (usually of experts on social media) that solid state drives (SSDs) are the future of compute infrastructure storage, it is in fact ...