TPM Tipping Point

Posted by Ken Y-N on July 3rd, 2008 at 04:53pm

After CNET News Blog poo-pooed the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) earlier, now here is Information Week looking on the bright side. It’s basically the same story as before, but by tentatively sitting on the other side of the fence the contents are very much different. For example, here is what they say about the uses for the TPM:

While disk encryption is a popular use for the TPM chip, it may be the user and machine identification features that steal the show in the long run. With support for multifactor authentication features such as an additional PIN or biometric authentication, TPM can serve as the one-stop shop not only for authenticating a user to a machine, but also as an authentication mechanism for Web applications and business applications that would benefit from strong cryptographic authentication.

However, they also identify a weakness:

The downside is key management complexities, which limit the number of organizations taking advantage of the technology.

This is not a weakness of the TPM itself, but of the infrastructure surrounding it, and the fact that there is strong privacy prevention built into every TPM. To fully manage systems corporations need additional software such as Wave System’s Embassy Trust Suite. To help organisations decide how to proceed, the Trusted Computing Group web site contains a number of white papers on how to integrate TPM management into existing systems.

Read the full article on Information Week here.

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