Kaspersky Lab has patented a new technology to control user access to encrypted data. Used in Kaspersky Lab’s corporate products, this technology ensures seamless employee access to encrypted volumes while maintaining a high level of security. The patent was granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Encryption allows corporations to add an additional layer of security to protect their data, even in case of a security breach where proper data access limits combined with encryption technology reduces the risk of data loss. The latter is a major concern for businesses around the world and according to Kaspersky Lab’s Corporate IT Security Risks Survey, 25% of businesses globally named prevention of all kinds of data leaks their top IT security priority.
The deployment of encryption and its efficiency is often challenged by the complexity of this approach. Kaspersky Lab’s recently patented technology is one of the many approaches offered to our corporate customers that simplify deployment and use of encryption. This particular technology focuses on the process of full-disk encryption, a process when an entire disk drive is encrypted, instead of select files as in file level encryption. The fact that the entire storage of a computer is encrypted usually requires a systems administrator to create user profiles for every user. Other methods to manage user access may as well be unavailable, until the operating system of a computer is loaded, which introduces certain challenges for an IT department.
The patented technology allows the automatic identification of active users of a computer, the creation of pre-boot profiles for them and the automatic application of security policies, specific for a certain user or group of users. Therefore, in case a computer is used by various employees at different times, the technology simplifies the adoption of encryption technology.
“In addition to simplifying multiple user scenario, this technology also solves a number of challenges IT professionals meet when initially deploying encryption. This technology identifies active users of a computer and makes sure that after full disk encryption is performed, they are able to access their accounts with existing security privileges. With this and other technologies, we make sure that businesses are able to strengthen their security as effortlessly as possible”, - commented Konstantin Kamanin, Kaspersky Lab’s security expert and one of the authors of the technology.
The technology is implemented in the corporate solution Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, a comprehensive security suite for corporations which is managed from a single console, along with Kaspersky Lab’s other security solutions.