Fortress vPro

Hardware. It is a great word. Hardware. It brings forth thoughts of strength, of metal and stone, of a solid foundation. Security is a word that seems to go naturally with the word hardware. After all, wouldn’t you want your security to be hardware based?

Intel’s vPro does exactly this – it brings hardware muscle to security and manageability and gives software a helping hand against threats to productivity and privacy. These could include attacks from viruses, phishing and hackers – as well as time lost due to a blue screen of death or misconfigured PC. Of course, no fortress is impregnable, but combined with the right security applications; a PC featuring vPro is a good deal more secure.

I talked to Rob Crooke, Intel vice president and General Manager of the Business Client Group and asked a few vPro related questions:

The 2007 version of vPro combines Intel’s Virtualization Technology with Intel Trusted Execution Technology (yeah I know, quite a mouthful – call it Intel TXT). Basically Intel TXT can help protect virtual machine monitors from attack – the type of attack that the operating system wouldn’t even be aware of. Intel vPro can now address several of the security shortcomings of software-based virtualization, removing a serious barrier to widespread adoption of virtualization.

Together these technologies can be put to use in a variety of ways and virtualization can solve many business problems:

Want to see some vPro demos?

Dell & Altiris Demo is below

For the HP & Symantec Demo, click below

See Lenovo Demo below

Other fab features include new ‘System Defense Filters’ and the latest Intel Core 2 Duo chips that make up part of vPro are up to 30% faster, yet they are much much cooler at idle – sipping only a paltry 8 Watts. The Intel Q35 Express chipset is also greener: it consumes under half the power as compared to last years model – both at idle and when running at full pelt. Just STUNNING.

If you want to learn more click here or here.

Some interesting press coverage in the press:

Financial Times

Charlie from The Inquirer

Austin from The Register

To see some more, just click here.