Richard Bowles Intel Technology Journal

The wide variety of uses of Intel® vPro™ technology is the scope of this Intel Technology Journal (Vol. 12, Issue 4). Content architect for this issue is John Vicente and he has assembled an excellent sampling of the ways that Intel vPro technology can be deployed to maintain system and data security, to improve manageability, and to support emerging compute models.

Security

The Journal begins with a thorough explanation of the security mechanisms built into the firmware, memory, and chipsets that are components of Intel vPro technology.

This cluster of technologies ensures that Intel's manageability framework is robust to attacks and that only authorized users can access the functions through local or remote management features.

A second article looks at the shifting requirements for the protection of data. In particular, the author explains and evaluates different ways to protect data at rest. Encryption provides the foundation, but should encryption be undertaken by software running on a client machine, by the chipset surrounding the processor, or by technology embedded in the storage device?

Manageability

"Innovating Above and Beyond Standards" is a rich article that puts the evolution of improved system management into an historical context. The authors point out that there is a natural tension between innovation and standardization and, at the same time, the two can and should coexist. The article provides a historical roadmap of related manageability standards and explains their association to current components of Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT).