Drive Bender v3, arrived… and 2019!

First up, welcome to 2019. It’s been a busy year for us here at Division-M, as we’ve also been involved in a number of side projects that have impacted our 2018 schedule… but, such is the software business, onwards we go into 2019!

We have just released v3 of Drive Bender. This particular release, while having a long beta cycle, does bring with it a number of security-focused features. The first of which is the “Pool Firewall”. This world first feature allows a user to lock down access to a specific folder, by only granting access to pre-approved applications. This protects files from ransomware and other malicious application wanting to alter files without authorization. This is achieved using rules that allow a user to lock down access to folders for specific “approved” applications. For example, you can specify an “Office” folder (and subfolders) that only allow “Word”, “Excel” etc to write to the “Office” folder(s). We have posted a short tutorial on the Pool Firewall here.

The next security based feature we have included is “Side Channel Protection”. This is a technology that has been requested for some time and protects the individual drives that make up the pool from being modified outside of the pool itself. So, even if a drive letter has been mapped to any of the physical drives, any attempts to write to these drives will be blocked… once again ensuring file integrity. The last feature I want to mention is “Drive Idle”… this is more of a performance/eco feature. While it is included in the v3 release, it is disabled by default due to some ongoing issues experienced by some users… we will circle back to this in the new year and work towards sorting the bugs. FYI – The Drive Idle feature was the cause of the lengthy beta cycle, in the end, we decided to push v3 with this disabled, just to get it out the door.

A couple of final Drive Bender notes… first I’d like to give a shout out to all the users that helped with the v3 beta, we have a lot of users involved in this version, so thanks to all! Finally, there is a price increase coming before the end of January… so spread the word.

The next piece of news revolves around Drive Xtender, and what is happening with its progress. All was on track until we switched gears and decided to work on Drive Bender v3, and it’s Pool Firewall feature (you can read why here)… we are expecting to resume moving forward with Drive Xtender early 2019.

Finally… we have some exciting news about a new product that has been developed in parallel with our Drive Bender v3 and Drive Xtender work, but first, some background. During the Drive Bender v3 development phase, the idea of a Pool Firewall raised a lot of interest… so much so that one of the most commonly asked questions was, “can we create a single pool drive (i.e. basically mapping an existing drive via a Drive Bender mount point) and use this new feature to protect files and documents on this drive”?  Well, you could, but that is a lot of overhead given you are not using Drive Bender for its primary intended purpose, pooling!

So, late in 2018, we decided to release a new product called “FolderWALL”. FYI – This was the internal name given to the Pool Firewall technology used in Drive Bender. This is a standalone product designed to protect files sitting on non pooled drives, and again, it works by allowing access to folders for given processes. Now, as users running v3 of Drive Bender will note, the configuration of these rules can be a little complex… so we have gone to great lengths to make FolderWALL easy to set up and maintain. The FolderWALL interface is based on our Drive Xtender interface technology, and is web-based, requiring very minimal effort to install and get up and running. Here is a brief list of features (* denotes premium features, ** not implemented, will depend on feedback):-

• File write restrictions to designated folders
• File read and list restrictions on designated folders
• A request option, file write restrictions based on a prompts to the user (failing to respond results in access denied)
• Learning mode, instead of defining rules, simply run in learning mode and allow FolderWALL to build the rules for you
• An immutable file system, files can be written to the folder but once written, can never be changed
• Command line interface, if your keen, you can go old school and go to the console
• Encrypted writes, files are written using TNO (trust no one) encryption, only you hold the keys to decrypt files*
• Action based file system changes, all file-based changes trigger actions that can perform external tasks*
• Cloud services access, use Drive Xtender cloud components to sync to cloud services**

Now, when is FolderWALL going to made available? Well… it has been in development for some time and is all but ready to go. The “early release” version is set to drop on the 1st of February 2019… this is not a beta, but a full release, minus some incomplete features, this release will be limited to a small number of users, you can secure your license by registering at portal.folderwall.com. While you can sign up, you cannot install FolderWALL until the 1st of February, however, as I’ve noted, we are limiting the number of initial users, so if you are interested, get in quick!

The wrap-up… we are excited about FolderWALL, and given the rise in ransomware attacks, FolderWALL offers “world first”, rule-based file protection against such attacks. In the coming days, I will post further details of FolderWALL, including pricing, stay tuned!

Update – The early access release date has been changed to the 14th of February