Last Wednesday, July 8, 2020, Microsoft unveiled its newest data protection technology called Kernel Data Protection (KDP). The latest security feature developed by Microsoft is designed to prevent information and privacy corruption in the industry. The security feature will be part of Windows 10.
Otherwise known as the KDP, the newest security feature developed by Microsoft comes as attackers are shifting their malicious hacking and attacking techniques towards corruption practices in the industry.
The KDP security technology platform functions by providing developers access to programmatic APIs in read-only mode. This exclusive access allows developers to safeguard Windows kernels and drivers in read-only mode, thereby preventing attackers from exploiting or modifying the system’s memory.
In short, Forbes states that KDP technology acts as blockage or wall against threat actors who turn to data corruption practices.
In its blog post, the Microsoft team said, “For example, we’ve seen attackers use signed but vulnerable drivers to attack policy data structures and install a malicious, unsigned driver. KDP mitigates such attacks by ensuring that policy data structures cannot be tampered with.”
According to Forbes, the technology was glazed over in October 2019, when the tech giant publicly released its Secured-core personal computer on the market.
While the program is geared towards matching its latest line of personal computers equipped with virtualization-based security (VBS), Microsoft assured its users that it will be available on Windows 10.
Based on the blog post released by the Base Kernel Team, the “KDP enhances the security provided by the features that make up Secured-cored PCs by adding another layer of protection for sensitive system configuration data.”
Besides enhancing the securing measures against data corruption, the KDP program also seeks to enforce other measures via the software. As reported by ZD Net, the new software was also developed with anti-cheat and digital rights management (DRM) features.
More than the aforementioned benefits on security protection, other benefits of the said program include improved performance as it no longer requires systems to verify data variables and components whose information has already been protected.
In addition to these, the KDP also enhances a computer’s ability to boost reliability, meaning its capacity to address memory corruption bugs is relatively faster and easier.
ZD Net reports that the KDP is already programmed into the latest Windows 10 Insider Build. However, despite announcing the product’s compatibility with the Windows 10 operating system, there is still no word on when it will be rolled out on the market.
