Trusted Computing Enters New Frontiers

In recent years, we have seen a flood of interesting uses for the TPM. In February, the TPM was recommended for use in securing high-risk industrial devices in the newly released international standard IEC 62443-4-2. In March, TCG member Infineon announced the first Industrial TPM. Last fall, Infineon announced the first Automotive TPM and shortly thereafter they announced that Volkswagen will use this TPM to secure their next generation of cars. Last January, Trusted Computing Group released guidance on how to use Trusted Computing to secure network equipment. And adoption of TPM in network routers was announced shortly thereafter. What’s going on here?

Trusted Computing and the TPM are moving into new applications.

For years, Trusted Computing has been ubiquitous in the world of IT. Thanks to Microsoft’s early embrace of the TPM, all Windows laptops, desktops, and servers include a TPM. The TPM is used by Microsoft Windows to store critical cryptographic keys, generate random numbers, and verify firmware and software integrity. Google similarly adopted TPM in Chromebooks to provide a hardware Root of Trust. And the open source community has added TPM support to Linux for similar reasons.

By working together, hardware and software vendors can create more secure systems than either alone. Open standards for the hardware-software interface enable innovation to flourish on both sides of the interface while maintaining stability, whether we’re talking about processor architectures like x86 and ARM or security components like TPM, DICE, and Opal.

But computing has moved beyond IT into new domains like automotive and industrial systems. Attackers have followed, using software vulnerabilities in recent years to infect and exploit cars and industrial plants. And now Trusted Computing Group and its members are bringing the power of Trusted Computing and open standards to bear against these new threats.

TCG standards are being rapidly adopted and adapted by experts in domains such as automotive, industrial, and IoT. And TCG is listening to these experts, tweaking the TCG standards to support them better and providing guidance to these new industries on how to use our technologies. As we enter this new world of intelligent systems, let’s vow to work together in open forums like TCG, creating open standards to keep the world safe.