Microsoft collaborate with chipmakers to improve PC security

Microsoft Corp. said it has developed security technology that chipmakers Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. plan to include into personal computer processors to increase their ability to protect against hackers and cyberattacks.

Intel and AMD said that chips with the new technology, which Microsoft calls Pluton, will be ready in the next few years. Qualcomm Inc. expressed support for the approach but declined to say whether it would incorporate this specific design into its chips. Microsoft and chip companies for years have been looking for ways to tighten computer protection by locking important information such as passwords and security certificates on hardware, making it difficult for hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in a computer program or part of a computer device and use that weakness to take on an entire machine.

Microsoft's design will be integrated directly into the computer's main processor, that makes it more difficult to hack computers and laptops, and it will offer more consistency in PC security if the technology is used widely. The advantage that on-chip security offers over software-based protection is that physical access to the machine is generally required to hack, compared to the risk of a remote attack over the Internet. That has become even more important during the Covid-19 pandemic because many company employees are working from on home hardware rather than operating behind corporate firewalls.

"You're now talking about maybe a few people in the world that have the tools and expertise" to hack into a system using the Microsoft's new technology, said David Weston, a partner director who works on enterprise and operating system security at Microsoft.