Network Protection and Endpoint Protection Are Not Enough; Storage Protection is Needed

Storage Protection
Storage Protection

Every day, there was news that the data of many companies was encrypted by ransomware or breached by malware. Considerable network protection technologies and endpoint protection technologies were already applied, but they were insufficient to prevent ransomware or malware that mutates countless times in advance. In order to complement the limitation of existing protection technology, FilingCloud presented the storage protection technology.

Existing network protection technology and endpoint protection technology have an examination layer in the network device or endpoint device. So they can block the network traffic if a network request came from a previously known malicious network band or stop the application if an application running on a PC is already known malware. In other words, it is only possible to block only when we know who is malicious in advance. Therefore, it is impossible to protect data 100% from brand-new ransomware and malware with an existing blacklist-based protection mechanism.

FilingCloud added an application examination layer that detects the application accessing data in the network storage to solve this problem. This special network storage, called FilingBox (www.filingbox.com), presents a network drive to PCs but has an application examination module inside. It provides files with read-write to the pre-registered application only but provides fake files with read-only to other unknown applications.

Even though ransomware or data breach malware already runs on the PC, data is safe because it provides read-only fake data to the attackers. Storage protection technology protects data securely because it works based on a white list composed of a list of pre-registered applications.

Recognized for a new way of data protection from ransomware and data breach malware, this technology is being standardized as X.spmoh in ITU-T SG17, which is the international technology standardization organization.

John Woo, the main editor of X.spmoh and the head of the research center of FilingCloud, said, "By adding the application examination layer to the storage, we changed the storage from a simple data storage to the data protection storage," and, "We expect that storage protection technology will become a good complementary technology for the existing network protection technology and endpoint protection technology."