LRM, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “LRM”), a company that provides Seculio-a cloud-based service for the provision of information security education, is a distributor of ZENMU Virtual Drive, a countermeasure against information leaks in the event of the loss or theft of a PC. This service is also used internally by the company. It has installed ZENMU Virtual Drive on all Windows-based company PCs and is working to ensure the thorough protection of information on PCs.

LRM is a company that is involved in the consulting and service business with a focus on information security (information security service business). For the mission underscoring its business, the company has formulated the concept of a Security Diet® to enable customers to achieve sustainable growth in corporate value by both protecting and utilizing information through the development of systems and the promotion of greater awareness on the part of human beings. Through its information security service business as developed under this concept, the company provides Seculio, a cloud service dedicated to the provision of an information security education cloud service, as well as a host of other cloud services, one of them being ZENMU Virtual Drive. LRM began using this service (which was previously known as ZENMU Virtual Desktop) internally in July 2019. Sales to external customers were launched in October of the same year.

“Before we chose to adopt ZENMU Virtual Drive, we used to internally encrypt disks using BitLocker as a countermeasure against information leaks from PCs. We also stipulated a rule stating that all user data shall be saved in the Company’s cloud storage (box) and that no user data shall be placed on the local disk of a PC and ensured thorough compliance with this rule. Nevertheless, there was still the risk of data theft if a PC came to be stolen or if user authentication measures came to be breached, such that we failed to fully address our concerns about the countermeasures we were taking. In this connection, we searched for a more robust security service and ended up adopting ZENMU Virtual Drive.” (Keisuke Horie, Manager, Corporate IT Team, Corporate Management Department, LRM, Inc.)

A major factor behind the decision made by LRM to adopt ZENMU Virtual Drive lay in the fact that it constitutes a highly robust security solution that is easy to use in that no new system needed to be installed for this purpose.

With ZENMU Virtual Drive, a virtual drive for the secret sharing of data is created just by installing the service on a PC and configuring the required settings. The user simply saves data (user data) on the virtual drive, whereupon the data is automatically rendered meaningless and split into two fragments, one of which is saved to a local disk on the PC and the other of which is saved to the cloud (ZENMU’s management service). Through this process, only meaningless data exists on the PC’s local disk, such that even if the PC were to be misplaced or stolen, you would be able to prevent the data from being recovered or leaked just by locking the PC using ZENMU’s management service.

In addition, ZENMU Virtual Drive allows you to register not just the cloud but also smartphones and other devices as locations to which distributed fragments can be stored. This enables secret sharing to continue to function even when the PC is offline.

“In fact, you can strengthen countermeasures against information leaks from PCs by using a VDI service in the cloud. To use a VDI service, however, you have to build a new environment for this purpose in the cloud, which will incur a certain amount of time and cost. Moreover, there is also a bottleneck in that no VDI service can be used when your PC is offline. In light of all of these considerations, we came to realize that ZENMU Virtual Drive is a more convenient and cost-effective system than VDI services. Thus, we decided to adopt ZENMU Virtual Drive and began selling it externally to our customers.” (Horie)

At this point in time (September 2023), LRM is making use of the Windows 11 environment, an environment into which the company has incorporated ZENMU Virtual Drive. All Windows PCs for company operations are protected by this service. Horie is pleased to see that it was easy to deploy the service to a large number of PCs since configuration files can be distributed on a batch basis from the cloud and noted that PC performance did not suffer upon the introduction of the service.

Horie outlines the effects of adopting ZENMU Virtual Drive as follows:
“A huge benefit of this system is the peace of mind you can enjoy when you think that user data will be properly protected even in the event of the loss or theft of a PC. With ZENMU Virtual Drive in particular, you can lock the external storage to prevent information from leaking from an affected PC even if the PC is online. No other comparable solution exists, such that the peace of mind you can obtain from its use is truly unique.”

In addition, when data is rendered meaningless and distributed on a fragmented basis by ZENMU Virtual Drive, the loss or theft of a PC can be regarded and handled as simply the loss or theft of a piece of hardware rather than a leak of information. “This change in positioning is also in line with the Security Diet® service that we promote and constitutes a major shift in benefits for companies.” (Horie)

Moreover, Horie argues that the know-how in terms of usage as obtained through the internal use of ZENMU Virtual Drive is useful in supporting client companies that use the service and in presenting suitable solutions based on the use of ZENMU Virtual Drive to companies wondering how they might be able to reinforce countermeasures against information leaks from PCs, summarizing as follows:

“With teleworking becoming more widespread in society in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, interest in ZENMU Virtual Drive began to pick up as more and more companies sought to fortify their countermeasures against information leaks from PCs being removed from the office. In hopes of seizing this opportunity, we would like to provide further impetus to efforts to strengthen and streamline countermeasures against information leaks through this service.”