Apricorn Assigned Patent

Apricorn, Poway, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,521,571) developed by Brown, Paul Cameron, San Diego, CA, McCandless, Michael Lee, Savaram, Radha, Poway, CA, and Davidson, Robert Michael, Santee, CA, for “secure storage devices, with physical input device, for secure configuration in a configuration-ready mode.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”A secure storage device includes a physical key input device, a secure memory and a controller. The controller arbitrates access by a host to securely configure the device based on the device’s mode of operation. The controller determines whether the device is in a configuration-ready mode based on information within the device. Only when the device is in the configuration-ready mode, the device may be configured by the host. When a device is in a non-configuration-ready mode, the device is prevented from being configured by the host, but the device can be set to the configuration-ready mode, for example, by nullifying configuration data, (e.g., PINs), by creating new encryption key(s), and by setting the mode to the configuration-ready mode. A null PIN is unusable to unlock the device after being locked. A new encryption key is unusable to decrypt data previously stored in the device, making such data unrecoverable.”

The patent application was filed on June 30, 2017 (15/640,292).