Did you ever have your laptop stolen and wished that you could have protected the data in it better? Now you can. There is a chip inside your laptop that can keep your data secure in a number of different ways and if you watch my video screencast I will show you how to leverage this chip, called the TPM or trusted computing module.
Almost a decade ago security industry experts got together to develop the TPM and it has taken them until now to come up with something that is affordable and easy to use, and can be managed by enterprise IT people too.
Since then, more than 500 million PCs have shipped with this little piece of silicon. Wave Systems, a pioneer in the development of TPM-based applications, is the sponsor of our screencast. You might not even know that it’s inside your computer, but it has lots of different uses. Let's examine three different situations in my video on how you can leverage this little chip and gain some extra added security.
First, let's look at VPN access.
If you are connecting to a virtual private network, you probably use some kind of authentication system, either a user name/password or a key fob with cryptographic information stored on it. The TPM obviates the need for any of these items, and puts your identity inside your computer so you don't need anything else to connect to your VPN.
Second, there is a better way to monitor PC Health.
The TPM chip can be used for early detection of Advanced Persistent threats that are difficult to detect because they hide in the pre-boot of PCs. Wave software can detect these changes and provide administrators with the information to make critical security decisions. And if your laptop is stolen and you have setup these tools properly, your IT department can quickly and remotely disable the machine as you can see what we are doing here.
Finally, there is Windows Bitlocker
Do you worry that if your PC is stolen someone can copy all of your data? Then you should encrypt your hard drive and removable USB drives too. Windows 7 includes its own crypto routines called Bitlocker, which can be centrally managed through MBAM or through Wave's ERAS. Unlike MBAM, ERAS allows you to set-up and use the TPM with Bitlocker for strong key protection, and also provides support for VPN access and PC health.
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