Australian Cyber Company Creates World-Class Ransomware Prevention Software

BankVault is a solution to ‘ransomware’, a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer system until a sum of money is paid.

“Unfortunately Australia is a big target for hackers because we’ve adopted online commerce and banking faster than any other country,” said Mr Graeme Speak, CEO of BankVault.

“BankVault provides a simple way to open emails and websites with complete immunity from hackers who are trying to encrypt PC files and extort ransom,” he said.

“Dangerous ransomware can be picked up from an innocuous email, opening a website link for downloading a file from an online shared drive.”

“Once open, computer files become encrypted and a ransom is demanded from the victim in exchange for a de-crypt key. Prices can range from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, often increasing in value every 24 hours. In the meantime, business operations grind to a halt. Home users hit by ransomware cannot view their personal documents, including photos of their loved ones.”

“BankVault is essentially a disposable PC.  It builds a new PC-in-the-cloud which appears on your desktop as a normal window.  You then access your email in a browser or open other website links with complete immunity. If one somehow did, it still doesn’t matter because you would simply close BankVault and login again to create a fresh new PC-in-the-cloud.  Nothing is actually running on your local machine so it’s completely safe.  It simply sidesteps the hackers.”

Mr Speak said BankVault provides cover for most cyber threats including:

- Opening web emails that contain ransomware or viruses.
- Downloading and opening files from Dropbox or a shared Internet folders.
- Securing online transactions such as shopping or banking where malware is specifically targeting bank login details. 

BankVault has been commended by IT industry commentator Ben Aylett who has described it as a unique solution to the problem.

BankVault recently won the Fintech category of the World Cup Tech Challenge at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus. It was an international competition spanning 50 countries for new start-up technologies.

“We won that award based on our product BankVault-Business, a physical USB device which sidesteps hackers making it impossible for them to access your bank account directly and steal your money,” said Mr Speak.

“The technique used by Bankvault is the very same used by security researchers and hackers to keep safe online when operating in high risk environments only with Bankvault the technology is packaged in a way that anyone can use it. This effectively levels the field for anyone even with no knowledge of cyber security. Hackers no longer have the technological upper hand.”

About BankVaultOnline.com

BankVault (www.BankVaultOnline.com) is an Australian technology innovation company now with offices in Perth, Sydney and San Francisco.  It was one of the pioneers in the field of cloud computing and now specialises in cyber security. 

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