Intel recently announced a new edition to its Professional Family of solid state drives, the Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series. These new business-class drives offer a wealth of security and manageability features, fast performance and a lower total cost of ownership according to a press release on the matter.

All of the drives in the Pro 2500 Series are self-encrypting drives (SED) that utilize hardware-based 256-bit encryption. They also feature the Trusted Computing Group's OPAL 2.0 standard and are Microsoft eDrive capable, policy-based controls designed to help prevent data breaches.

Rob Crooke, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, said the need to protect assets, keep an eye on the bottom line and ensure employees have the best tools is a challenge for IT departments.

The Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series is a well-rounded solution to help balance those often competing needs, he added.

Pro 2500 drives will be available in both 2.5-inch and M.2 form factors with capacities ranging from 120GB up to 480GB. Sequential read/write speeds check in at 540MB/sec and 490MB/sec, respectively, across the board while random 4KB read/write speeds vary depending on capacity.

A total of 10 drives have been added to the Pro 2500 family as of writing, all carrying a standard five year warrant. Unfortunately, Intel didn't provide a release date or pricing for any of the new models.