Linus Chang, CEO and founder of Scram Software

Scram Software, an award-winning cybersecurity software development startup, has announced that ScramFS – the world’s most advanced cryptographic file system – will be commercially available to businesses from January 2018. Via its intuitive command line interface (CLI), ScramFS enables system administrators to easily encrypt large amounts of data (whether stored locally or in the cloud) to protect data, reduce breaches and assist GDPR compliance.

“System administrators and DevOps engineers are the trusted custodians of sensitive data. But the alarming increase in data breaches throughout 2017 points to a glaring hole: the people responsible for implementing the technology have not had the right tools to properly protect the information stored and exchanged within their organisation’s network,” said Linus Chang, CEO & founder of Scram Software.

“Encryption is one such tool that is heavily underutilised, or improperly used. Moreover, many engineers think of encryption as difficult, painful or costly – which is a reflection of the lack of quality products currently available. With the upcoming release of ScramFS we are bridging this gap, by providing easy to deploy, affordable cryptography tools to organisations who will also benefit from complying with GDPR through encrypting their plaintext data,” Chang continued. “While system administrators can start encrypting in under five minutes, it’s the ability to script and automate repetitive encryption tasks using the ScramFS CLI that provides reliable and ongoing protection for organisations’ data.”

From its inception, Scram Software wanted ScramFS to stand head and shoulders above existing encryption systems. In order to properly combat cybercrime in the age of the cloud, Scram worked closely with academics from leading universities in Australia and the USA. ScramFS has consequently been carefully researched and designed over the past three years with a level of rigour, verification and transparency not seen before in closed-source encryption software. The impetus for this was to address the long-standing lack of trust associated with cryptographic products – the so-called “snake oil” problem – in that it is usually almost impossible for users to verify the claims that a vendor makes.

Dr Ron Steinfield, an award winning leader in lattice-based cryptography (Monash University, Australia), was the primary cryptographer who designed ScramFS and conducted one of several security analyses of the technology. Dr Steinfield said, “Scram’s careful approach of getting advice from and working closely with cryptography and security experts in developing crypto products is different from many other software developers I know of. I have heard numerous examples of companies who put crypto design at the hands of software developers with little security background and consequently make mistakes of incorrectly using or implementing crypto algorithms in their products. Scram’s approach significantly reduces the likelihood of such vulnerabilities.”

how-scram-fs-works

An additional benefit of ScramFS is that it’s designed to be long-term secure: 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 even decades to come.

Public beta test sites for ScramFS include Core dna, a global provider of an all-in-one digital SaaS platform that allows clients – including Nintendo, Louis Vuitton and Langham Hotels – to create solutions for content, marketing, e-commerce, intranets and communities. Core dna’s specific business need was to be able to help clients servicing the US healthcare sector to comply with HIPAA law, which restricts access to individuals’ private medical information.

Sam Saltis, CEO of Core dna, commented, “Using Scram’s encryption technology, we are the first content management system to offer HIPAA compliance with ScramFS and we know that we are delivering the best cryptographic security possible.”

For an overview of how ScramFS works and its associated business benefits watch this short video: https://vimeo.com/243788169