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Jonathan Newell spoke to Linus Chang of Scram Software about encryption and what's being done to establish more clarity.
Earlier this month, Scram Software released ScramFS for SMEs to have access to easy cloud data encryption as well as GDPR compliance.
Despite encryption products of various forms already having been in existence for a considerable period of time, data breaches nonetheless seem to be getting worse. According to Scram, there are a number of reasons for this, including difficulties encountered by administrators in deploying and using encryption products and end user confusion about the topic.
According to Linus Chang, the founder of Scram Software, ScramFS addresses the needs of the user and administrator community by making the process of encryption simpler and more obvious.
An example is local encryption in which a hardware encrypted disk drive or flash memory stick encrypts "on the fly", with complete transperancy to the user. This is fine except for two problems..... how do you know it's doing its job and what do you do with files taken from the disk?
A user can be so used to just saving a file to disk that it's tempting to believe its state of encryption is permanent, not realising that copying it to another location or e-mailing it will lose its protection.
Although system administrators have a higher level of understanding than end users, they nonetheless make mistakes by, for example, using easy routes for storage, sharing and backup, such as using the "public" option in Amazon S3.
Encryption becomes very nebulous, with no real understanding about the status of data in various locations.
For administrators and developers, ScramFS takes the burden away from the application or storage provider by taking on the core encryption task. For the user, Scram Explore presents a simple user interface making it clear which files are encrypted.
The software does this by encrypting not only the contents of the file, but also the filename, type and length. Not only does this provide clarity to the user by presenting an interface that makes the encryption status obvious, but also provides additional security protection by preventing alterations to critical file parameters.
With ScramFS, Linus Chang and his team are offering a new kind of encryption product that promises to provide clarity in an area of security that many feel is shrouded in smoke and mirrors.
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