One of the main reasons holding the industry back is the potential security issue of the contents of memory being saved to storage, ready for a rapid boot sequence.
Now a team of researchers with North Carolina State University claim to have developed a selective encryption process that allows elements or strata within the non-volatile RAM to be encrypted as and when required.
According to Andy Cordial, managing director of Origin Storage, the breakthrough means that sections of the instant-on memory can be encrypted, with data flowing into and out of that memory segment being encrypted on-the-fly, in much the same way as an encrypted drive operates.
"This is really great news, as having this feature on instant-on computers will not only speed up the boot time of desktop and laptop computers significantly, but it will also help to raise the awareness of encryption", he explained.
Cordial added that, although awareness of the need for encryption at all stages in data usage is growing, there are still a lot of computer users that are blissfully unaware of the risks they are running in not encrypting data when it is at rest.
A growing number of users, he says, are aware of the need to encrypt sensitive and personal data in transit, such as across the Internet or in an online banking web browser, but it is the data storage side of things that is so often ignored.
The new i-NVMM encryption system developed by the researchers, he adds, will selectively choose which data to keep encrypted in memory, meaning, for example, that spreadsheet or word processing sections of active memory can be automatically encrypted – and so protected – when a machine is turned off.
Then, when the machine is turned back on – whether or not the user has shut down the relevant application(s) before they turned the computer off – they can rest assured that the data is away from prying eyes, until such time as they wish to reload that information.
"It's also important to understand that, even whilst the computer is switched off, and the usual security systems that run in the background of the PC are not operating, cybercriminals cannot gain access to the memory dump of the system, and steal it", he said.
"Our observations suggest that, in a growing number of instances, corporate secrets now require protection by encryption, so preventing theft of intellectual property. With the additional layer of security that i-NVMM brings to the technology table, data can be better protected", he added.