Cisco Cisco Smart Storage Hard Drive Trays Technical References
How to Encrypt Data
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About AES Encryption
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a technology standard for encryption. The standard
consists of three block ciphers: AES-128, AES-192, and AES-256. Each AES cipher has a 128-bit
block size with key sizes of 128, 192, and 256 bits. This is a common encryption standard used
worldwide.
Before You Begin
Please beware of the following before you start to use the data encryption feature of the Smart
Storage.
The encryption feature of the Cisco Smart Storage is volume-based. A volume can be a
single disk, a JBOD configuration, or a RAID array.
You have to select whether or not to encrypt your data when you create a disk volume on
the NAS. In other words, you will not be able to encrypt a volume after it has been created
unless you initialize the disk volume. Note that initializing a disk volume will clear all the
existing disk data on it.
The encryption on the disk volume cannot be removed without initialization. To remove the
encryption on the disk volume, you have to initialize the disk volume and all the data will
be cleared.
Please keep the encryption password or key safe. If you forget your password or lose your
encryption key, you will not be able to retrieve your data!
Before you start, please read this document carefully and strictly adhere to the
instructions.
Encrypt Disk Volume During NAS Installation
Follow the instructions of the Quick Start Guide (QSG) to initialize the NAS by the web-
based interface. In the quick configuration steps and when prompted, select Yes for the
Encrypt disk volume option.
Note: You can execute disk volume encryption by the LCD panel if your NAS is
equipped with one. Please refer to the QSG for the instructions.
Encrypted Disk Volume
Once you have selected to encrypt the disk volume, the encryption settings will appear.