Thanks to Linus Chang, Founder and CEO of Scram Software for introducing me to ScramFS – an internationally peer-reviewed encryption system for safeguarding cloud data – now available to US and UK small and medium enterprises (SMEs), government, and not-for-profit organizations, enabling fast and easy encryption of sensitive data to reduce breaches and assist in ensuring HIPPA and GDPR compliance.

According to a GDPR Preparedness Pulse Survey by PWC, 92% of respondents considered compliance with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) a top priority on their data-privacy and security agenda in 2017 – with over half of respondents saying it is “the” top priority and 38% saying it is “among” top priorities. 

Researched, developed, and peer-reviewed over three years by a team of security experts including Dr. Ron Steinfeld, a leader in post-quantum cryptography (Monash University, Australia), and Dr. Toby Murray, a leader in software security (The University of Melbourne, Australia), ScramFS provides fully transparent client-side data encryption to help organizations bolster their cyber defences and level of GDPR compliance. Specifically, ScramFS enables organizations to implement encryption and pseudonymization security protections (Article 32) by design and default (Article 25), while also mitigating the obligations of reporting data breaches to data subjects (Article 34).

“It is surprising that so many businesses are still either unaware or not yet prepared for GDPR given the serious potential consequences of non-compliance,” said George Crump, founder and lead analyst, Storage Switzerland. “My advice for any business firm, regardless of size or where they are based, is to become well educated on the impending GDPR. And then, to make the investments and take the necessary steps to ensure compliance. Exploring solutions such as Scram Software’s ScramFS is a good place to start.”

ScramFS is also designed to be long-term secure, as most of today’s cryptosystems are expected to be broken by quantum computers within 15 years. But ScramFS uses only quantum-resistant techniques, so what users encrypt today will be secure for years and decades to come.

Cryptography has long had a reputation for being notoriously difficult or troublesome to implement, yet statistics show that security improves when IT professionals have quality tools and documentation showing them exactly how to perform specific tasks. With this in mind, Scram Software has created an ‘encryption cookbook’ for ScramFS, enabling system administrators and DevOps engineers to follow ‘recipes’ for protecting many types of data, from encrypting a WordPress website backup, for example, to the encryption of a MySQL or Microsoft SQL Server backup.

ScramFS also features a simple Application Programming Interface (API) that allows software developers to add encryption into their applications, delivering secure systems by design and default by encrypting data early, thereby mitigating the possible effects of future breaches or lapses in security.

“Unfortunately, the world is experiencing an epidemic of data breaches. And, the problem seems to only be getting worse – pointing to some serious problems with IT security,” said Chang. “For SMEs and non-profit organizations are often struggling with limited IT staff and budget, these challenges are continuously exacerbated by ever-increasing stores of data that must be protected, spread across various devices and geographies. Add to that the pressures from increasingly stringent legal regulations, and regulations such as HIPAA and the impending GDPR.”  He continued, “ScramFS delivers an encryption toolkit designed to counteract these problems and dramatically improve information security, by empowering system administrators and software developers to encrypt sensitive data quickly and easily, thus making data files unintelligible to hackers and other unauthorized persons. With GDPR compliance becoming enforceable in just 100 days’ time, our ScramFS encryption cookbook is a quick and easy reference that helps organizations to secure their data in a hurry and with minimal effort.”