They steal your data
before they encrypt it.
In every major breach of 2023–2025, attackers exfiltrated data before deploying ransomware — if they encrypted at all. VaultGuardian catches the upload in milliseconds and kills the connection before encryption begins.
Encryption is the distraction. Data theft is the attack.
Our analysis of every major breach from 2023–2025 reveals a pattern the industry is ignoring: attackers exfiltrate first, encrypt second — if they encrypt at all.
6 TB exfiltrated. 192.7 million records. No MFA on the Citrix portal. Ransomware came after the data was already gone.
$2.5B total costA 10-minute phone call. Okta Super Admin. Azure Global Admin. Data exfiltrated via Mega.nz and Dropbox before ransomware hit 100+ servers.
$100M total costTicketmaster (560M records), AT&T (109M records), Santander. All from stolen credentials. No encryption deployed — pure data theft.
669M+ records stolen58 million individuals affected. Zero-day SQL injection. No ransomware deployed. Pure exfiltration at industrial scale.
58M+ individuals exposedSocial engineering of an outsourced IT vendor. 20-day dwell time. Complete database stolen. No encryption. Paid $15M ransom for data alone.
$15M ransom paidRussian SVR compromised a test tenant, pivoted to production via OAuth, read senior leadership email for 7 weeks. No encryption. Pure espionage.
Source code accessedOut of the 8 major breaches we analyzed, only 2 involved encryption.
In every case, exfiltration happened first or was the entire attack. Detection almost never came from automated security tooling.
Where VaultGuardian intervenes
Every ransomware attack follows the same kill chain. VaultGuardian triggers at Phase 4 — before most companies even know they've been breached, and before encryption begins.
Initial Access
Day 0Stolen credentials, phishing, or zero-day exploit. The attacker gets in.
Lateral Movement
Days 1–14Reconnaissance. Privilege escalation. The attacker maps your network, finds your valuable data, establishes persistence.
Data Staging
Days 7–20Files compressed, archived, staged for extraction. Still silent. Still invisible to most security tools.
Exfiltration
⚡ VAULTGUARDIAN TRIGGERSThe attacker starts uploading your data to external servers. This is the loudest moment in the entire attack — and the first time most companies find out they've been breached.
Connection killed. Alert fired. Response clock starts.
Your team knows the server is compromised before the attacker can encrypt a single file. Average industry detection: 2–7 weeks. VaultGuardian: under 1 millisecond.
Encryption
✓ PREVENTEDRansomware deploys. Files encrypted. Ransom note delivered. By now, your data is already in the attacker's hands — unless exfiltration was stopped.
More than a kill switch
Exfiltration Prevention
Deterministic egress monitoring kills the connection the moment upload traffic exceeds thresholds. Your data never leaves the network. No AI. No heuristics. Pure math.
Stops data theftInstant Breach Detection
The kill event IS your alert. You know your infrastructure is compromised at the exact second the attacker acts — not 9 days later, not 7 weeks later, not 3 years later.
Millisecond detectionEncryption Prevention Window
Because exfiltration comes before encryption in the attack chain, catching the upload gives your team time to isolate systems and prevent ransomware deployment entirely.
Stops ransomwareWhen did they find out?
Real detection times from real breaches. Not one was caught by automated security tooling.
Invisible inline protection
VaultGuardian operates as a Layer 2 bridge — completely invisible to your network. No IP address. No ARP. No attack surface.
Monitor
Captures every packet on the wire. Counts upload bytes per second using MAC-level filtering. 5-rule detection engine with complementary mechanisms.
Detect
Compares real-time egress speed against deterministic thresholds. No heuristics. No ML. No cloud. Math that can't be fooled.
Kill + Alert
Severs the network link in under 1ms. Fires an alert with full forensic context. Your incident response clock starts immediately.
Built for the edge
RK3588S Octa-Core
4× A76 + 4× A55
8 GB LPDDR4X
High-bandwidth packet processing
2×2.5G + 1×GbE
WAN + LAN + Management
5-Rule Engine
Complementary detection mechanisms
< 1 ms
Hardware-level link severance
JSONL Forensics
180-day retention, AI-ready format
USB-C PD (5–20V)
65W adapter included
Go + Linux
Memory-safe, single binary
Isolated Dashboard
Dedicated management interface
Where data loss is not an option
Backup Infrastructure
Protect NAS, SAN, and dedicated backup servers. Snapshots protect against encryption. VaultGuardian protects against exfiltration. You need both.
Healthcare & Compliance
Change Healthcare lost 192.7M patient records. Hardware-enforced egress control with auditable JSONL logs for HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2.
Air-Gapped Archives
Enforce physical data boundaries for systems that should never upload. If it tries to talk, VaultGuardian ends the conversation.
We don't claim to solve everything
Your backup infrastructure needs two things. Most companies only have one.
Immutable Snapshots
ZFS, btrfs, or WORM storage. If an attacker encrypts your files, yesterday's snapshot is untouched. Well-understood and widely deployed. You probably already have this.
Many solutions existVaultGuardian DEC-1
Deterministic egress enforcement at the hardware level. If an attacker tries to upload your data, the connection dies in under 1 millisecond. Plus instant breach detection to start your incident response.
Nobody else does this$349
Pre-configured. Ready to deploy. One year of firmware updates included.