To encrypt its data, the pen uses an algorithm called Rijndael, which the National Institute for Standards and Technology is planning to use as the Advanced Encryption Standard, which will replace the existing Data Encryption Standard (DES), which is currently being phased out of use.

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Hitachi's version "scrambles data using a password-generated key" as the data is written, and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved using the highly-touted Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm.

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