The company was once a leading manufacturer of magnetic-tape data drives and media for minicomputers, becoming a pioneer in tape streamer technology in the early 1980s.

[3] Cipher was principally co-founded by William "Bill" Otterson (c. 1931 – 1999), a 14-year veteran of IBM who got his start working on computer systems in the Air Force in the early 1950s.

[3] In around late 1970, the company began expanding their offerings,[6] releasing drives that could read and write data in a random-access manner through the use of more complicated transports.

[3] One of their fiercest independent competitors at the time was Kennedy Company, a pioneer in the tape drive industry also based in Southern California, who were eventually acquired by Allegheny Ludlum.

[7]: 67 In 1973, Sutter Hill began divesting their shares in Cipher to the Computer Machinery Corporation (CMC) of Santa Monica, California, a maker of data entry equipment, starting in May 1973.

[7]: 66 The acquisition was initially a boon for Cipher, who saw increased profits, but it soon turned perilous when CMC themselves ran into financial difficulty in the mid-1970s.

[21][22][23] Between June and July 1986, Cipher acquired Optimem Inc., a manufacturer of 12-inch, WORM optical discs, from Xerox Corporation for $6.3 million.

[25] Optimem were deep into development of a rewritable optical disc format, partnering with 3M in pursuit of this goal, when they were acquired by Cipher.

[26][27] In 1988, by which point Cipher had all but given up on the division, Optimem earned contracts with the DoD, NASA, and the USPTO to supply them with WORM disc products.

[29] Consolidation of Cipher's San Diego plant soon followed, with 220 workers laid off in November 1988, the bulk of whom worked in PCB manufacturing.

[35] Between December 1989 and March 1990, rival Archive Corporation of Costa Mesa, California, launched a hostile takeover of Cipher Data Products, seeking to acquire the company in whole.

[36] Archive had spent the preceding year and a half fighting Cipher in court over patent infringement suits filed by the latter since May 1988.

[39] Following the acquisition, Cipher remained a subsidiary of Archive for roughly two years, with Irwin and Optimem also kept and made separate divisions.