Trusted Computing is not a silver bullet

Posted by Ken Y-N on August 20th, 2008 at 12:14pm

On the Dark Reading site, rapidly becoming my favourite Trusted Computing-related site, Sara Peters recently posted a follow-up to a recent story I reported on regarding why Trusted Computing is not taking off.

On their message board someone said this, prompting the blog post:

Perhaps it’s because trusted computing resolves just a small part of the data assurance problem. The ultimate goal is total control over business data flow, including regulation of data use by authorized users. A true trusted system protects data from all users on the systems… Information-centric security requires access authorization at the data-file level, post-authentication.

I would summarise that in the way suggested by this article’s title, that the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is no use because it is not the silver bullet that will slay all your information-related security threats.

However, as Ms Peters points out, the TPM has never claimed to do this, not does it need to be so. Indeed, if the TPM did that, or claimed to do that, then it would indeed be the evil treacherous computing monster that others erroreously claim it to be.

The article suggests that the TPM, and Trusted Computing in general, be looked at as endpoint security.

It’s a good article, so please visit Dark Reading and read the full story.

Tags: dark reading, sara peters