Design Rationale for Secure Probe Storage based on Patterned Magnetic Media

We describe the design rationale for a hardware tamper resistant secure storage system based on probe storage with a patterned magnetic medium. This medium supports normal read/write operations by magnetising individual dots perpendicular to the media plane. We report on an experiment to show that in principle the medium also supports a separate class of read/write-once operations by allowing individual dots in the media to be destroyed irreversibly by precise local heating. Security stems from the fact that bulk-erase is not possible.