After many months of deliberation, the Trusted Computing Group has finally announced that it has finalized the draft specifications for incorporating built-in encryption and security services directly into hard drives and other storage devices. Trusted Storage is part of a new generation of security protocols that are built directly into hardware, and includes devices such as Intel's Trusted Platform Module (TPM). While the Trusted Storage Group says that the specs for Trusted Storage may change slightly from the draft version, they are final enough for both hardware and software developers to start building devices and applications that support the specification right now. The official specs are referred to as "Version 1.0, Revision 0.9�draft" in accordance with traditional storage-related standards.

The new spec allows the creation of "trusted storage units" on hard drives and other media, where only approved applications are allowed to read and write data. These units are stored on hidden partitions that are not viewable by standard drive partitioning software. Data stored on the trusted partitions can only be accessed when the drive receives a signal from the CPU that it is authorized to access the data on the hard drive. The drive then responds with a signal that confirms that it is in fact the same hard drive that the computer believes it is accessing. The drives do not require that the computer in question have a TPM module on the motherboard, but if one is present it extends the "trust boundary" of the platform, providing additional security against tampering.