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Toshiba unveiled a new family of hard disk drives with a security twist: They are self-encrypting.

There have been several incidents where a laptop was lost or stolen, and sensitive information was exposed because the data was not encrypted. With these Toshiba drives, IT departments know all the data stored on those systems are automatically secured.

The MKx61GSYG line of self-encrypting hard drives will automatically store data using the 256-bit AES encryption and prevent the data from being accessed if the drive is used inside an unfamiliar computer, Toshiba said April 12. The drives can be configured with invalidation attributes to scramble or deny access to protected data, depending on specific use cases.

The 2.5-inch two-platter 7,200 rpm drives will use the 3G bps Serial ATA II interface and have 16MB of buffer memory. The drives will be available in 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 640GB capacities.