ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,443,764, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to NCR Atleos Corp. (Atlanta).
"Hard drive anti-theft protection" was invented by Kerry Elissa Archibald (Dundee, Great Britain), Graham Flett (Dundee, Great Britain) and Anthony Edward Roper (Dundee, Great Britain).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Boot firmware of a terminal sets a lock password on a hard disk drive of the terminal to lock the hard disk drive from access. The password is obfuscated in boot variables or stored separately on a server independently of the terminal. During subsequent boots of the terminal, the firmware de-obfuscates the password from the boot variables or obtains the pa...