Basically next year you could get a motherboard with a security module
onboard. Which is both your friend, and not.
The last EETimes-print-edition had an article with *much* more info but I
found the following online. You can comment on the www.trustedpc.org
stuff until October, on their site; they have whitepapers.
Coprocessors Move
Security Onto PC
Motherboards
(09/05/00, 6:51 p.m. ET) By Junko Yoshida , EE Times
SAN MATEO, Calif. -- Responding to
industry demand for better built-in
security, vendors of PC chips and
smart-card ICs are racing to develop
security coprocessors that mount on a PC
motherboard.
Architectural approaches vary, but
suppliers agree that this new design socket
will start showing up in motherboards as
early as the middle of next year.
Integrating a security chip makes it
possible "to view the PC as an endpoint
for the delivery of goods and services" in
the digital economy, said Geoffrey
Strongin, platform security architect at
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (stock:
AMD), Sunnyvale, Calif.
AMD is one of the PC chip makers
readying a security device.
The trend is to move "core security and
e-commerce functions out to the edge of
the Internet, and place them in all endpoint
devices including the user's PC,"
concurred Steven Sprague, president and
chief executive officer at Wave Systems
Corp. (stock: WAVX), Lee, Mass., which
fields the Embassy security chip and is
working with AMD on a reference design.
Promoters say that while much effort has
gone into securing the network and the
server-side infrastructure, until very
recently the client has been overlooked.
Thanks to advances in SSL software
technology, the transmission of data
across the Internet is more secure than
ever.
But "vulnerability often exists at the PC
and at the server," said Cees Jan Koomen,
chairman of the board at security-chip
vendor Pijnenburg Securealink, Vught,
Netherlands, which is also developing a
coprocessor.
"You need a cryptographic solution in
hardware, placed at the server and PC
terminal," he said. That way, "critical
information, such as a key, is not available
except inside the chip, while the hardware
can accelerate the transaction speed."
Driving the security-coprocessor
groundswell is an emerging specification
being put together by the Trusted
Computing Platform Alliance, an industry
group founded by Compaq Computer
Corp. (stock: CPQ), Houston;
Hewlett-Packard Co. (stock: HWP), Palo
Alto, Calif.; IBM Corp. (stock: IBM);
Intel Corp. (stock: INTC), Santa Clara,
Calif.; and Microsoft Corp. (stock:
MSFT), Redmond, Wash.
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20000905S0019
