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Technology for SSDs to Prevent Ransomware

September 9, 2021

Hopefully, you will never be a victim of ransomware. Unfortunately, by some reports, ransomware attacks have increased in the thousands of percent. Anti-virus, anti-malware, and other security suites are still needed, but you should also consider installing some sort of EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) solution. EDR is different than anti-virus and uses much more sophisticated artificial intelligence and machine learning to quarantine ransomware type activity as it occurs. The Register reports that there may be a similar function available for solid state drive firmware called SSD-Insider+. As the post says, “A team of researchers claim to have come up with an upgrade that makes SSDs impervious to ransomware attacks – detecting infections and reverting unexpected encryption within a matter of seconds, at the cost of a small increase in latency.”

Basically, SSD-Insider+ “watches” drive activity of ransomware attempting to encrypt data and stops it within seconds. The cost for this capability is a slight decrease in performance. Since SSDs are pretty fast to begin with, I’m sure a slight degradation will hardly be felt by most users. Even though the technology does look promising, the betting money is that cybercriminals will figure out a way to bypass the capability just like they try to shut down running security software. Let the games begin.

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