Firewall plus storage apparatus, method and system

An improved storage firewall architecture, method and system that works in parallel with existing security technologies and, inter alia, provides application software authentication, user authentication & authorization and software executable authentication and authorization in the execution of an application, examination, verification, and authentication of all storage access requests, monitoring of protected storage to detect & repair anomalous changes, encryption of protected storage, both data and software, provisioning (deployment) of patches, configuration changes, and software through a secure synchronization link to a configuration and patch management server, and server-based system administration & configuration to prevent malware and other attacks from penetrating local configuration and security mechanisms, and when an attack does successfully penetrate these defenses, to detect the effects of the penetration so as to remediate and/or resolve the situation.