Secure Startup: Microsoft in Your Motherboard - What Microsoft Wants
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Microsoft is pushing this feature as important for businesses with corporate secrets and laptop users. There are indeed laptop thefts where thieves gain access to the owners' personal information on the computer. As of yet though, it's hard to see many real advantages of this are over conventional software encryption methods. After all, you can encrypt parts of disks or the whole thing already and block out unwanted viewers. How useful is the new technology? It seems the marketable advantage beyond already available encryption is that it takes users out of the loop. Lazy users might not lock up everything sensitive in an encrypted area of their drive, or they might write their access password somewhere around the computer (making security measures pointless). By taking passwords out of users' hands, it is easier on the users and the network administrators can relax knowing that the computer is taking care of everything.
This really isn't useful to most users. Home PC owners and laptop users interested in security can already manage and encrypt sensitive data they might have with existing programs. A hardware failure will not render their system useless if they use software encryption (just make sure to have a copy of the keycode locked away lest you forget it). Most users aren't even concerned about this kind of security. They are worried more about their online security and don't think much of people stealing their computer. It's no wonder home desktops aren't Microsoft's target with Secure Startup. System administrators wanting to exert control over security measures and remove the human factor are the only ones who should take notice of this Longhorn feature.
It's hard to tell if Microsoft will still try to hype Secure Startup to those who don't need it. Perhaps they will, but it won't be a required feature for "Longhorn Ready" computers. Some manufacturers are gearing up to sell computers labeled as "Longhorn Ready" toward the beginning of 2006. Among the requirements for this label are a mid-level or high-end processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a graphics chipset that Microsoft approves. The label is intended to show consumers which computers they can migrate to Longhorn with and have it perform well. This indicates Microsoft is not considering it a very important feature yet, so Secure Startup may only be a footnote for now.
Opponents of Trusted Computing ought to rejoice. Microsoft has not fully opened the Pandora's Box of their grand Trustworthy Computing plans, so it will not be a standard yet. Windows is going to continue supporting insecure hardware and software. This means that while TPM secured motherboards and software would have been standard-issue PC parts, they may now be completely optional. If Secured Startup goes nowhere and the demand is still high for insecure components and applications, the current vision for Trustworthy Computing might dissolve. Microsoft and accomplices would have to put their thinking-hats back on once Blackcomb (or whatever OS follows Longhorn) comes around.
On the other hand, this is a delay and not a cancellation. It may drive the industry one step closer to compliance, providing an intermediate platform. Microsoft expects NGSCB to be ready by 2007 or 2008. Considering the problems they have had with releasing Longhorn by the end of 2004, don't count on it. Though once Microsoft is ready to delve a little deeper into what NGSCB can do, hardware manufacturers will already be at least partially compliant and customers may pay less attention to the nay-sayers warning people about a technology that is already partially deployed.
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