Apparatus and method for data security in a data storage device. In some embodiments, an alternating pattern is written to a magnetic recording medium as a sequence of symbols at a selected clock rate. A repeatable magnetic signature is generated by reading the alternating pattern from the medium, the magnetic signature having relatively weak entropy at boundaries of the symbols. A multi-bit digital sequence is extracted from the repeatable magnetic signature, the digital sequence having relatively strong entropy. The digital sequence is stored in a separate memory coupled to the medium. Access to data stored on the medium is authenticated responsive to the digital sequence stored in the separate memory.