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New product from Vancouver company keeps data safe

CRU adds physical roadblock against malicious software, hackers

By Brooks Johnson, Columbian Business Reporter
Published: February 1, 2016, 5:24pm
3 Photos
A new hard drive made by local tech company CRU Inc. went into wide release Monday. The SCILock Secure Drive uses hardware, rather than software, to keep data secure from hackers and malicious software.
A new hard drive made by local tech company CRU Inc. went into wide release Monday. The SCILock Secure Drive uses hardware, rather than software, to keep data secure from hackers and malicious software. (Natalie Behring/The Columbian) Photo Gallery

In the war against data breaches and stolen identities, companies and government agencies can’t just rely on changing passwords. For those who need to protect state secrets or expensive intellectual property, one Vancouver company is building bulletproof cyber defenses.

CRU’s SCILock Secure Drive, which went into wide release on Monday, ups the data security game by adding a physical roadblock to malicious software or hackers. Trying to compromise data on the hard drive will be undone by a simple system restart.

“The product is a hardware-based way of protecting data — we just build a shield around it,” said Randy Barber, CEO of CRU Inc. “What we’re trying to get at with this is things are going to happen — it’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ — and when that something happens what you want to do is reboot your system.”

The SCILock — pronounce it “sky-lock” to sound like you know what you’re talking about — takes a hardware approach to what software has done for years. By relying on a circuit and a physical key instead of a computer program such as Windows’ Restore Point or Apple’s Time Machine, Barber said, there are fewer ways to fall victim to attacks.

“In all those (software approaches), we’ve found weaknesses that can lead to unwanted changes,” he said.

CRU, founded in 1986, has long been a presence in the cybersecurity market. Its initial forays into security include removable drives still used in the film industry, as well as at high-security government agencies that need to secure data on, say, nuclear weapons.

“To this day, no one has hacked a computer drive that is in a safe,” he said.

Driving its visibility, the company’s technology has been featured on the TV show “NCIS.” (The real Naval Criminal Investigative Service and other law enforcement agencies are customers as well.)

CRU also was an early player in the conversion from physical film to digital storage for movies.

“We were approached by Hollywood 10 years ago as they started working on this new concept called digital cinema,” which is ubiquitous today, Barber said.

CRU has 47 employees at its East Vancouver headquarters at the Columbia Tech Center. There are offices in Kansas and California that employ a handful of people, but Barber said any employment growth will likely happen here.

“It’s really active out here,” Barber said of the Tech Center area. “If you drive by here once a quarter, you’d be surprised at all the activity.”

The company has a fairly niche market for its products — don’t expect to find the SCILock Secure Drive at Best Buy any time soon — though CRU does offer many of its hard drives and other storage supplies on Amazon.

While the new hard drive, which was narrowly released over the past few years, could eventually get “productized” and find a more general audience in the future, Barber said, for now the market for the padlocked hard drive is all CRU’s.

“There’s never a lack of something new coming out of the world of software in terms of making your data safer,” Barber said. “We’re not aware of other products quite like (SCILock). People have released something like it, but none were successful.”

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Columbian Business Reporter