Dell Unwraps Trusted Security Notebooks – Yahoo! UK & Ireland News

ComputerWire Staff

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL – news) has made good on promises to offer built-in support for the Trusted Platform Module on selected desktop and notebooks systems in early 2005, releasing three new notebooks that are built around the TPM security technology.

The TPM can be thought of as a smart card that is embedded on the system board and acts as a security key for the PC. The problem with existing PC security is that there has to date been no standardized way to securely store keys that are used for machine identity so that the keys cannot be discovered if the system is stolen or otherwise compromised. The TPM is designed to address this weakness.

Dells new $1,677 Latitude D410 and two other new notebook machines are the first in what can be expected to be a series of TPM-compliant PCs from Dell. The PC vendor has committed to releasing a variety of TPM 1.1. enabled OptiPlex desktop, Precision workstation and Latitude notebooks in early 2005. Dell plans to offer a TPM 1.2 option in the summer of 2005.

TPM describes a protected part of a PC that can store encryption key pairs and do cryptographic processing. This module can be leveraged by software to perform security functions in a way that is supposedly tamperproof and “trusted”. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT – news) , HP, IBM (NYSE: IBM – news) , Intel (NASDAQ: INTC – news) and AMD (NYSE: AMD – news) , Sony, Phillips, Nokia (Helsinki: news) , VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN – news) , National Semiconductor (NYSE: NSM – news) and Wave Systems (NASDAQ: WAVX – news) are companies that are behind the Trusted Computing Groups version 1.2 of the TPM component.

With version 1.2, the group has addressed some privacy concerns with new features such as support for the ability to create multiple keys for dealing with different parties. It also allows users to specify the level of access to the module different applications can have.

Use of TPM 1.1 in the Dell D410 means systems administrators can choose to lock digital content to specific PCs. Computer files can effectively be linked to specific machines to prevent network intrusions or theft of intellectual property, the vendor said.

The unit also comes with an environmentally friendly nine-cell extended life battery, that is not based on mercury, lead or cadmium technologies and so is in compliance with latest EU Directives. The new battery type is said to allow the D410 to run for up to 7 hours, something that is being called nearly all-day computing on a single battery charge.