USB microcontroller secures HDD access

Fingerprint recognition technology has been used by Cypress Semiconductor and AuthenTec to introduce a reference design for adding biometric security to external hard disk drives (HDDs).

As portable data storage has proliferated, users have begun to carry sensitive corporate and private data on these drives. If these drives are lost or stolen, the damage can be very severe, depending on who ends up with the drive.

The Cypress/AuthenTec CY4651 reference design allows manufacturers of portable HDDs or enclosures to add biometric security to these drives, limiting access to data on the drives to those with a registered fingerprint.

The reference design includes everything needed to add security to an external HDD, including schematic diagrams, firmware, a user design manual and a complete bill of materials (BOM).

The reference design includes AuthenTec's EntrePad 2510, a biometric fingerprint slide sensor, and Cypress's EZ-USB FX2LPT USB microcontroller, which interfaces with AuthenTec's sensor and delivers data from the HDD to the host computer.

The CY4651 reference design can be downloaded free of charge from the 'reference designs' section of the Cypress website.