iStorage presents cloudAshur, an ultra-secure and collaborative cloud encryption module.
About iStorage Limited
iStorage is the trusted global leader of award-winning, PIN authenticated, hardware encrypted portable data storage and cloud encryption devices. iStorage offers the most innovative range of products to securely encrypt, store and protect data to military standards. Accreditations include: FIPS 140-2 Level 2/3, NCSC CPA, NLNCSA BSPA/DEP-V, & NATO Restricted Level.
What trends are you predicting in the future?
More and more organisations are moving their critical data to the cloud due to the tremendous potential of cloud platforms.
The cloud is still in its infancy – there is no doubting the numerous benefits of adopting and using the cloud. According to Gartner:
- The cloud services market will grow to $331 billion by 2022
- 78% of small businesses will be using the cloud by 2020
- 82% of companies experienced lower costs in 2017 due to cloud adoption
But every technology has its pros and cons. In this case, the flip side lies with lack of ownership, control and, therefore, privacy and security of stored data. There are bound to be security vulnerabilities that hackers can take advantage of and, unfortunately, this is what’s happening – organisations are being hacked. Hackers from many countries, many state sponsored, are wreaking havoc. On 20 December 2018, the US charged two Chinese nationals for hacking cloud providers, including 45 US companies, US government agencies and several unnamed managed service providers. In November 2018, Google’s services were hit by a massive hack allegedly carried out by threat actors in Russia, China and Nigeria. The hack redirected all of Google’s search, business and cloud computing operations through services run in these countries using a hack called the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This gave the hackers unprecedented access to extremely sensitive information on users and direct access to any data that was not independently encrypted.
Cloud providers claim that data stored on their servers is safe and, as an additional security measure, some encrypt all data stored on their servers. However, they also hold the encryption key which lets their systems see and process user data, such as indexing data for future searches. These services also access the key when a user logs in with a password, decrypting the data so the process can use it.
Some services let users keep the encryption keys themselves, for additional security, however users have to forgo some functions such as being able to search cloud stored files and editing of shared documents. The other vulnerability is the possibility that your computer, which stores the encryption key, is stolen and hacked. Your data will be at the mercy of the hacker.
Organisations are being hacked everyday, some we read about, but the overwhelming majority go unreported. Nearly all of these cases lead to catastrophic consequences not only for the hacked organisation but more importantly the innocent users.
What is cloudAshur and how will it help my business?
cloudAshur offers ultimate protection of your data, whether it’s stored in the cloud, on your PC/MAC or transferred as an email attachment or file sharing software. cloudAshur allows users to securely Encrypt, Share & Manage their data in the cloud.
cloudAshur (patents pending) encrypts all data in transit and at rest, using a hardware-based AES-XTS 256-bit encryption key that is securely stored on the cloudAshur device. You alone will have full and secure control of your encryption key, meaning your data is completely safe, even if your cloud account is hacked.
Encryption of data is important, protection of the encryption key is vital. cloudAshur has been designed to protect the encryption key in the most secure way possible. The cloudAshur comes with multiple layers of authentication designed to thwart every conceivable form of cyber-attack, rendering any such attempts futile.
iStorage is about to change the cloud security landscape from the relatively secure to the virtually impregnable with the recent launch of its cloudAshur hardware security module. Contact your QBS account manager today to learn more about iStorage cloudAshur and its award-winning range of PIN authenticated hardware encrypted data storage devices.
