My Dell Laptop Powered By Intel vPro? Offers End To End Built-In Protection Against Advanced Cyber-Threats (Including AI)

?It is quite a difficult time to operate any business in 2023. Aside from the uncertainties of industry markets, the expanding commercial digital ecosystem is facing an array of sophisticated cyber-threats from state actors and criminal hacker gangs. As we have transitioned from offices to hybrid and remote workplaces, every business and everyone’s computers have become a ripe target for attackers.

Thankfully, if you run a business or are just an individual surfing the web, there is a way to better protect your sensitive data by using end to end built-in cybersecurity at the hardware, firmware, and software levels with a laptop powered by Intel vPro?. From a cybersecurity practitioner perspective, Intel vPro can be used to help protect against the myriad of increasingly sophisticated and malicious malware, ransomware, and social engineering attacks. And you do not need to have any deep cybersecurity or IT expertise to use it.

As an owner and frequent user of a Dell laptop with Intel vPro, I have personally experienced the fortified elements that are addressing emerging cyber-threats. While nothing is invincible, Intel’s professional-grade computing foundation has been working very well for me in avoiding attacks from the many minefields throughout the digital ecosystem. It is also very efficient and easy to use. This is not surprising from all the investment in research and development that has gone into the security design functions.

?Dell & Intel? Combined Innovation, A Long History

The Intel vPro team and Dell Technologies have been working together for many years on research and development and prototyping to bring the best security options for business to help safeguard devices for a more secure IT environment. The best minds have come together to build the best security products with foundational security being designed up the stack.

I recently spoke to Rick Martinez who serves as a Fellow and Vice President for Client Solutions at Dell Technologies on the collaboration and security capabilities of the Intel and Dell teams.?He sums up the approach in his blog when it comes to cybersecurity. “IT decision makers and end-users typically interact with some blend of sales personnel, the device(s) and product support. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to security. It’s similar to food safety. You can’t judge food safety based only on your interactions with a waiter in a restaurant, because food safety starts in the kitchen. Similarly, what makes devices secure must be in place even before a product is produced – and is rarely visible as a result.”

Rick also notes that “when we consider the protections for our commercial devices, we think about security outcomes – i.e., how the device contributes to the overall security health of an organization. How does the device help prevent attacks? What keeps it safe while under attack? And how does it remain safe throughout its lifetime?” Three Considerations for Establishing Device Trust | Dell USA

My Dell laptop with Intel vPro incorporates the considerations Rick elaborated on. ?The Intel and Dell teams are perpetually improving on the processes and technologies that can make a computer most secure from its inception and throughout its lifespan.?Dell trusted devices and Intel vPro offer a defensive framework for this cyber hostile environment by taking hardware and firmware security to the next level.?This includes the zero-trust ready and security design frameworks being formulated for both industry and government.

?Built In Cybersecurity For My Dell Laptop Powered by Intel vPro

From the bare metal hypervisor to the OS system and computer form itself, the Intel and Dell teams have taken an invisible by design holistic root of trust approach to secure every component of the laptop.

For my laptop, security is exemplified via Intel? Hardware Shield which is available on Intel vPro Windows-based PCs.?The shield enables protection to hardware, firmware, the operating system, and applications.?The platform also includes updated threat detection capabilities, including a hardware-based?capability.?That detection capability provides the ability to alert endpoint security software when anomalies are detected. The shield defends against advanced threats at each layer: Hardware, BIOS/firmware, hypervisor, VMs, OS, and applications. BIOS refers to the pre-boot firmware that the main processor executes at the beginning of every boot and any code that remains resident at runtime that was deployed by the pre-boot firmware. The pre-boot timeframe protects the PC from executing unauthorized code and provides a safe foundation for the operating system and user applications.

Intel’s Hardware Shield?is deep in cybersecurity defensive elements. From the start it features hardware-based security capabilities that support a secure boot, allowing your PCs to launch into a trusted state. It enables hardware-based virtualization to help protect user access credentials, workspaces, applications, and data in hardened enclaves. And it has hardware-based encryption to help protect data at every layer. The Intel? Trusted Device Setup (Intel? TDS) OEM remote health attestation service delivers a signed health report and a digital seal that captures events that could pose a security risk, if the device has been at all tampered with.

The Intel Converged Security and Management Engine (CSME) is also a very important component for effective cybersecurity. The microcontroller is built into Intel processor chipsets. Intel ME provides an interface between the operating system, hardware, and BIOS. BIOS refers to the pre-boot firmware that the main processor executes at the beginning of every boot and any code that remains resident at runtime that was deployed by the pre-boot firmware. The pre-boot timeframe protects the PC from executing unauthorized code and provides a safe foundation for the operating system and user applications.

Additionally, Intel ME is granted extensive system-level privilege and runs in every power state. This is especially important for detection of insider threats. The Trusted Device agent scans and verifies that Intel ME firmware is present and untampered after initial installation, startup, and every 24 hours. Dell Trusted Device Below the OS Whitepaper (delltechnologies.com)

Intel's validation goes beyond the CPU. The silicon on the motherboard, the NIC, the graphics, and other hardware components are thoroughly evaluated to provide an overall more secure PC.?

?Cybersecurity And The Emerging World Of Artificial Intelligence (AI) And Machine Learning (ML)

The potential impact of artificial intelligence is on everyone’s minds these days. To compound the already precarious cyber-threat matrix facing businesses, criminal hackers are already using AI and ML as tools to find and exploit vulnerabilities in threat detection models. They do this through a variety of methods. Their preferred ways are often via automated phishing attacks that mimic humans, and with malware that self-modifies itself to fool or even subvert cyber-defense systems and programs.

While criminal hackers use ML and AI to find and exploit vulnerabilities, those technologies can be used to detect threats too. In fact, Intel also offers the industry’s first silicon-enabled AI threat detection to help stop ransomware and crypto-jacking attacks.?Intel is the only provider of hardware-based security capabilities that enhance industry security software to deliver high efficacy threat detection—utilizing Intel? Threat Detection Technology (Intel? TDT). This capability includes an existing ransomware detector and accelerating memory scanning capability, and they are working to bring to market a new?anomalous behavior detection (ABD)?capability?to help address supply chain-style attacks that infect business applications.?Introducing 12th Gen vPro Security (intel.com)

In cybersecurity terms, machine learning provides the fastest way to identify new attacks, draw statistical inferences and push that information to endpoint security platforms. Horizon scanning and monitoring of networks can report on deviations and anomalies in real time.?It allows for automatic updating of defense framework layers (network, payload, endpoint, firewalls, and anti-virus) and continual diagnostic and forensics analysis for optimum cybersecurity.

The ML and AI enabled CPU threat detection featured on my Dell laptop with Intel vPro can examine all the layers above it so it can catch many zero-day threat derivatives and malware cloaking techniques often used by hackers. If you cannot detect, you cannot mitigate cyber-threats.

The reality is that most businesses and individuals do not have the tools or cybersecurity expertise to best defend their platforms, networks, and data. Intel vPro offers end to end built-in protection against the increasingly advanced cyber-threats on the horizon, including attacks employing artificial intelligence. For me, having those security by design and continually updated capabilities for my laptop is indispensable.

?This article was sponsored by Intel and written by?Chuck Brooks, President of Brooks Consulting International, is a globally recognized thought leader and subject matter expert Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies. Chuck is also Adjunct Faculty at Georgetown University’s Graduate Cybersecurity Risk Management Program. LinkedIn named Chuck as one of “The Top 5 Tech People to Follow on LinkedIn.” He was named “Cybersecurity Person of the Year for 2022” by The Cyber Express, and as one of the world’s “10 Best Cyber Security and Technology Experts” by Best Rated. He is also a Cybersecurity Expert for “The Network” at the Washington Post, Visiting Editor at Homeland Security Today, Expert for Executive Mosaic/GovCon, and a Contributor to FORBES.

Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software or service activation. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Your costs and results may vary.

?Intel, the Intel logo, Intel vPro? and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.