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Microsoft BitLocker hardware-accelerated rollout in Windows 11

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H score 11
1 unique sources, 1 articles

Summary

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Microsoft is rolling out hardware-accelerated BitLocker in Windows 11, improving encryption performance and key protection on supported devices. The new mode offloads cryptographic work to SoC hardware with HSMs and TEEs, and on supported NVMe systems it defaults to XTS-AES-256. Microsoft says the change reduces CPU overhead substantially, with tests showing about 70% fewer CPU cycles per I/O than software BitLocker. The rollout begins with Windows 11 24H2 after September updates and extends to Windows 11 25H2, starting on Intel vPro systems with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (“Panther Lake”) processors.

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Timeline

  1. 23.12.2025 22:03 2 articles · 6mo ago

    Microsoft rolls out hardware-accelerated BitLocker for Windows 11

    Initial Disclosure

    Microsoft is rolling out hardware-accelerated BitLocker in Windows 11 for supported devices with NVMe drives and crypto offload capable SoCs, using XTS-AES-256 by default and offloading bulk cryptographic operations to hardware security modules and trusted execution environments to reduce CPU use and improve security. Initial support starts with Windows 11 24H2 after September updates and Windows 11 25H2, beginning on Intel vPro systems with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (“Panther Lake”) processors, while unsupported algorithms, manual key sizes, certain enterprise policies, and some FIPS configurations remain on software-based BitLocker.

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