Hytrust, Inc.

High Cloud Security

Stephen D Pate

Babu Katchapalayam

Blaine T Cuykendall

Thomas James Satterlee

Tushar Y Tambay

Lynn F Kerby

Kelvin J Pryse

During the user-mode startup of an operating system of a computing system and prior to the execution of a service control manager process, an early retrieval process is launched so as to retrieve (i) decryption keys corresponding to one or more encrypted files, folders or data partitions and/or (ii) an access control policy from a key management server external to the computing system. The retrieved information may be provided to a disk filter driver and/or file system filter driver of the operating system. In order to communicate with the external key management server, the early retrieval process may initialize the network stack of the computing system, since network services is not yet available prior to the execution of the services.exe process.

Methods and systems for performing an early retrieval process during the user-mode startup of an operating system

During the startup of an operating system of a computing system, a monitoring process of the operating system is used to detect an entry point of a daemon manager process. In response to detecting the entry point, the startup process is paused, and an early attach process is launched so as to attach one or more encrypted data partitions to the operating system. As part of the early attach process, the network stack of the computing system may be initialized, which allows the early attach process to retrieve one or more decryption keys corresponding to the one or more encrypted data partitions from an external key management server. The one or more decryption keys may be transmitted to a disk filter driver of the operating system, which provides the operating system with access to the one or more encrypted data partitions. Upon the conclusion of the early attach process, the operating system startup process resumes with the one or more encrypted data partitions now accessible to the operating system.

Methods and systems for attaching an encrypted data partition during the startup of an operating system

A virtual file system is described that is implemented in a virtualization platform as a stackable file system layer that intercepts file operations between a hypervisor and a physical file system. The virtual file system encrypts (at least in part) VM files to be stored, organizes the encrypted VM files into VM sets, and then maps and stores the encrypted VM sets into storage pools. Storage and access to files within the VM sets is controlled through the use of administrator-determined policies governing storage, security, access control, authentication, and auditing. The system and method described herein allow a seamless integration between a data center (e.g., a private cloud) and computing resources served across the internet and supported by cloud service providers (e.g., public clouds) while ensuring that the security needs of customers and cloud service providers are met.

Cloud aware file system

An approach to securely distributing and running virtual machines is described that addresses the inherent insecurity of mobile virtual machines by authenticating a user before establishing a specialized virtualization runtime environment that includes a filesystem driver inserted into the host operating system to provide secure access to a virtual machine by authorized hypervisors only. Further described is the creation of a SecureVM package that includes the various components used to perform the operations of installation, user authentication and establishment of the specialized virtualization runtime environment.

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El Dorado Hills, CA, United States of America

Stephen D Pate