The disruptions of the past two years have sparked a profound change in corporate IT and the way teams manage devices. One of the biggest pressures: proliferating vulnerability points created by the shift from devices within the corporate infrastructure to a dispersed, remote fleet.
Devices used in the home have made the task of securing devices more challenging than ever for three main reasons.
First, the volume and intensity of ransomware attacks have grown dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the process, they’ve exposed how cybercriminals can infiltrate a single PC to spread out laterally across the network, ultimately infecting hundreds of endpoints and servers.
Second, the rising prevalence of work-from-home scenarios has also increased the number of attack vectors by orders of magnitude. Corporate firewalls effectively protect workers on the business network, but now employees are using their devices in ways they might not have when in the office. That means visiting all manner of websites, downloading consumer apps, and even letting family members use company-issued devices.
Finally, the nature of attacks is changing. Software-based security is no longer enough to protect an organisation from all threats. That’s because sophisticated attacks can infect devices and applications below the operating system level, taking over before the OS has time to boot up and deploy security software.
Security at the hardware level
To combat these threats, hardware-based security platforms provide a foundational layer of protection that can help detect and prevent cyber threats at the software layer. Hardware-based security features can spot anomalies in the application layer and alert software to help contain threats before they reach your data or harm your business.
In addition, hardware-based security provides hooks and optimisation for multiple layers of security focused on protection, detection, and remediation.
That’s a win not only for beleaguered IT departments coping with a rising tide of threats and attack vectors but for end users who can stay up and running longer with fewer interruptions, boosting the organisation’s productivity as a whole.
So how can you enable hardware-level security for your fleet? By selecting business devices with robust security technology built-in at the silicon level.
An integrated platform for security, performance, stability, and manageability
The Intel vPro® platform integrates a range of technologies built for business IT to boost performance, improve device stability, aid manageability, and secure data.
Included in the platform is Intel® Hardware Shield, a set of security capabilities that can help protect your users’ applications and data below and within the operating system and provide advanced threat via Intel® Threat Detection Technology (Intel® TDT).
For example, Intel Hardware Shield helps shut down a class of attacks that long evaded software-only solutions. That’s because it works by locking down memory in the BIOS to prevent malware from compromising the OS. Intel also delivers the industry’s first silicon-enabled AI threat detection to help stop ransomware and crypto-mining attacks. It’s all to let systems securely and seamlessly boot up into a trusted state.
The rapid rate of change impacting IT organisations may be inevitable. But hardware-level security can go a long way towards mitigating the risks so systems can stay secure, companies keep serving customers, and people remain productive.
Learn more about Intel® Hardware Shield here