Patent ID: 8539229

Claim:
A machine-implemented method, comprising: maintaining trust certificates for secure servers on a secure hard drive that is just accessible to a kernel of an Operating System (OS); using a special application booted with the OS and that modifies the OS to prevent access to secure hard drive of the modified OS and without altering file permission processing associated with an existing file system, the modified OS is modified by decreasing permissions for root resources and restricting access for those root resources having root privileges on the modified OS to preventing access to the secure hard drive by those root resources, the restriction enforced by the modified OS and the root resources cannot read data from the secure hard drive and the modified OS provides access to the secure hard drive to just a kernel process of the modified OS; maintaining a private key on the secure hard drive used to validate the trust certificates and provide decryption services to the secure servers; maintaining a random key on the secure hard drive used to encrypt data associated with one or more storage environments, and wherein the trust certificates, the private key, and the random key are pre-installed on the secure hard drive by a manufacturer or distributor of the secure servers; and encrypting the data with the random key for backup, version control, and restore operations against the one or more storage environments.