I am writing in response to the article, “Cybersecurity Measures Inch Forward, but Critics Doubt Their Effectiveness ” (Roll Call  June 22, 2015).  

The fact is that a new technology — one developed in 2013 by my company, GreenTec-USA — does exist that can cost-effectively address the kind of cyber-attacks that have recently hit federal agencies such as the Office of Personnel Management and private companies such as Sony.  

This technology is a hard disk drive known as a Write Only Read Many (WORM) disk. It is currently being employed by the U.S. Department of Justice and, again, if employed properly, could be part of the solution to the nation’s security from cyber-attacks.  

Any data stored on the WORM disk cannot be altered, overwritten, reformatted, deleted or compromised in any way within a computer or data center. The WORM disk functions as a normal HDD with zero performance degradation from its additional built-in capabilities. These capabilities prevent data damage from any form of cyber-attack.  

The WORM disk is the only solution where protection is at the physical level on the disk, unlike others in the marketplace that offer only appliance or software protection of the data. This new breakthrough combined with encryption makes it impossible for hackers to steal data or render it useless by attacking the stored data, or disks.  

Part of the reason that this technology has not entered the wider discussion about cyber-security is that it is so new and that GreenTec-USA has not really marketed the technology on a wide scale. Since every federal agency and every private sector company employs hard drives, for a few dollars more they can all install WORM hard drives and have a level of protection heretofore unheard of in the tech world.  

Given the huge stakes involved — both for the U.S. government and the private sector in this country — a close look should be taken at this technology. Sooner rather than later.  

Richard Detore is president and CEO of GreenTec-USA.  

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