Trusted Computing Group

The final panel on Thursday morning brought together several industry experts to discuss "Key Drivers and Trends of Trusted Computing. Chaired by John Pescatore, Vice President, Internet Security, Gartner, Inc., the panel had representatives from NIST, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Intel and AMD.

 

In his introduction of panel members, Matthew Van Kirk, Project Director of the Technology Commercialization for Trusted Computing and the High Assurance Platform Program, NSA/CSS CNCSC s said, "We are really interested in what are the Fortune 1000 and the technology community going to do about why we are here and the purpose of this whole conference."

 

Pescatore took this to heart and in his opening statements asked, "How are these trusted computing concepts going to be baked into the commercial infrastructure and products that businesses and consumers will particularly buy and use in the future?" Panel members had some ideas on what has to be done.

 

Bringing together TCG's TPM with TNC to provide solutions and systems focus can provide non-linear benefits according to H-P's Mark Schiller. He also discussed the "trusted cloud" concept. "I think it is going to prove to be a key enabler for taking cloud from something people are willing to kind of play and trust with some of their lower tier data at this point, to a cloud capability that will be extremely trustworthy over time," said Schiller "The cloud married to trusted computing is going to prove to be a killer app in this space

 

Intel's Ernie Bricknell said that the negative (or lack of an) image that the TPM has because of some early comments and efforts must be overcome. Instead, it must become a desirable and valued part of the process.

 

"What we would really like to see is a perception change," said AMD's Ronald Perez regarding the TPM's image. "Perhaps this is a contrarian view, but I don't think we have articulated the value statement," he added.

 

Susan Alexander, Senior Advisor and Chief, Initiative Integration, Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force, Office of the Director of National Intelligence who was not on the panel but spoke in a session on Tuesday, thought it was extremely important to differentiate between security and trust "As was said earlier," she explained. "People don't want pay for security but they might be willing to pay for trust."

 

It was a great conference but just a start. There is a lot of hard work left to do. With all the positive feedback, we should look forward to the 2011 conference and expo.