FIPS 140-3 Level 2 Validation for Kioxia NVMe SSD Cryptographic Module

Kioxia America, Inc. announced that the cryptographic module used in CM7 Series PCIe 5.0 NVMe Enterprise SSDs has been validated to meet Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3, Level 2 for cryptographic modules.

The FIPS 140-3 standard specifies a set of security requirements of the Cryptographic Module Validation Program administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), used as a security metric for federal agencies to procure validated IT equipment. Companies and federal agencies may prefer or may now be required to deploy newer, more stringent government standards – which SSDs validated to FIPS 140-3 requirements would meet. Compared to the previous FIPS 140-2 requirements, 140-3 provides higher standards for SSDs, including a stronger authentication method and updated implementation guidance.

The company brought PCIe 5.0 technology to server and storage applications with the CM7 Series NVMe SSD. Targeted to enterprise applications and use cases – including AI, HPC, online transaction processing databases, and data warehousing – CM7 Series drives bring enterprise performance, reliability and security to data center servers and storage.

CM7 Series SSD key features include:

• PCIe 5.0 compliant NVMe SSDs in 2.5-inch ⁽¹⁾ and E3.S SSD form factors
• Dual and single-port support
• Read-intensive and mixed-use endurances
• Capacities from 1.6 to 30.72TB (15.36TB in E3.S form factor)
• Security options include: Sanitize instant erase (SIE) ⁽²⁾, TCG Opal self-encrypting drive (SED) ⁽³⁾ and SED utilizing FIPS 140-3 Level 2 module

“Protecting data is becoming increasingly important to organizations of all sizes, and adhering to high security standards is being required for all types of storage,” said Maulik Sompura, senior staff director, product marketing, Kioxia America, Inc. “We continue to raise the bar with FIPS 140-3 Level 2 validation for the cryptographic controller used in our SSDs, providing customers with peace of mind with some of the highest storage security measures available.”

⁽¹⁾ 2.5-inch indicates the form factor of the SSD. It does not indicate the drive’s physical size.
⁽²⁾ SIE optional model supports Crypto Erase, which is a standardized feature defined by the technical committees (SCSI) of INCITS (the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards).
⁽³⁾ SED optional model supports TCG Opal and Ruby SSCs. It does not support some features of TCG Opal SSC.