Secure and convenient access control for storage devices supporting passwords for individual partitions

摘要

An information processing apparatus includes a storage device having an access-restricted area accessible if the password is properly authenticated and an access-unrestricted area accessible regardless of whether or not the password is authenticated. The information processing apparatus allows a password to be registered in a registration server beforehand, prompts a user to enter the password when accessing the access-restricted area and, if the password is not entered, reads from the access-unrestricted area a password retrieval program for retrieving the password from the registration server, activates and executes the password retrieval program to retrieve the password from the registration server, and causes the storage device to authenticate the retrieved password to place the access-restricted area in an accessible state.