Is Your Computer Vulnerable Again? Experts Reveal How Hardware Security Can Save Your Digital Life!
In today’s digital age, our personal and professional lives are increasingly dependent on technology. As we spend more time online, we become more vulnerable to cyber threats, malware, and other security risks. While software safeguards can provide a level of protection, they are not enough to keep our data secure. Fortunately, hardware security is emerging as a game-changer in the fight against cyber attacks. In this article, we explore the importance of hardware security and how it can help save your digital life.
Hardware Security: What is it, and Why is it Important?
Hardware security involves implementing physical safeguards into the design of computer hardware to prevent unauthorized access, data theft, and other threats. The goal of hardware security is to make it difficult for cybercriminals to manipulate or compromise the underlying computer system. Hardware-based security features are typically built into the CPU, chipset, or other components of the computer, ensuring that they cannot be bypassed by software-based attacks.
Hardware security is particularly essential for businesses and government agencies that handle sensitive information. However, it is also critical for individual users who store personal data like social security numbers, bank account information, and other valuable information. With cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated and targeted, hardware-based security features can provide significant protection against a variety of hacking techniques.
Hardware Security Features to Look for in Your Computer
Not all hardware security features are the same, and some are more effective than others. Here are some key hardware security features to look for in your computer:
Trusted Platform Module (TPM): TPM is a security chip that provides a secure storage area for encryption keys and other sensitive data. It helps protect against unauthorized access and cyber attacks by validating the integrity of the system boot process and enabling secure remote management.
Secure Boot: Secure Boot is a firmware feature that ensures that only trusted operating systems are loaded during startup. It helps prevent malware from executing during the boot process, making it more challenging for hackers to gain access to the system.
Biometric Authentication: Biometric authentication is a hardware-based security feature that uses physical characteristics such as fingerprints or facial recognition to verify a user’s identity. It is more secure than traditional password-based authentication and is increasingly becoming the standard for securing sensitive data.
Encrypted Storage: Encrypted storage protects your data by encrypting it before it is saved to the hard drive. It helps prevent unauthorized access by making it difficult for attackers to read the data even if they manage to access the storage medium.
CPU-based Security Features: Modern CPUs come with built-in hardware security features like Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV). These features provide secure enclaves for sensitive data and help protect against malware-based attacks.
The Bottom Line: Hardware Security is Critical to Protect Your Digital Life
As cyber threats become more sophisticated and targeted, hardware-based security features are becoming increasingly important. While software-based security measures are useful, they can be bypassed by determined attackers. Hardware-based security features provide an additional layer of protection that can make it much more challenging for hackers to gain access to your system or compromise your data.
If you’re in the market for a new computer, be sure to look for hardware-based security features like TPM, Secure Boot, biometric authentication, and encrypted storage. These features can help ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data and provide peace of mind in an increasingly complex and dangerous digital world.
If one of the leading reasons that help facilitate cyberattacks is weak, unpatched, outdated software, could a strong hardware-based security product eliminate that risk? The answer is slightly more nuanced, suggest security experts.
- Kingston has launched the industry-first USB drive with top-of-the-line military-grade security.Some cybersecurity experts believe hardware-based security products can help supplement software-only security.Others think such hardware security products are much harder to patch than software running on computers.
Kickstarting the discussion was the launch of the IronKey Keypad 200 USB drive, which Kingston claims is the industry’s first drive that delivers military-grade protection for our data. The drive contains several protection mechanisms to ensure stored data can’t be accessed by unscrupulous users and cybercriminals, thanks to a couple of different read-only modes. This could help it combat malware, like the one discovered earlier this year, which spreads via infected USB drives.
“The Kingston IronKey Keypad 200 is an encouraging development in secure removable storage,” Sami Elhini, senior product manager at Cerberus Sentinel, told Lifewire over email. “The strong encryption algorithm, pin lockout feature, self-destruct functionality, and epoxy tamper protection make this device suitable for protecting sensitive information.”
Hardwired Security
You can think of hardware-based security as a means of protection against attacks that take the form of a physical device rather than using software installed on a computer. Common examples include smart cards that work along with passwords to further strengthen all kinds of online and offline user accounts.
“As we continue to see an increase in the number of software vulnerabilities, adding additional security controls through hardware could certainly be an added benefit for regular users on the consumer side,” Tonia Dudley, VP and CISO at Cofense, told Lifewire over email.
Dudley argues including additional layers of protection and security controls at the hardware level is definitely worth the effort. For instance, she points to Yubico’s Yubikey, which is popularly used for strengthening multi-factor authentication (MFA).
But Roger Grimes, data-driven defense evangelist at cybersecurity firm KnowBe4, isn’t so easily sold on the benefits of hardware security products.
Pointing to the IronKey Keypad 200 USB drive as a useful mobile storage solution, Grimes told Lifewire via email that it’ll attract people looking for the “best and strongest.” However, he argued that most hacking attempts don’t consider whether the target uses encryption or not, let alone the strength of the encryption algorithm.
“Have you heard of a real-world exploit where the defender said, ‘If only I had military-grade encryption, that attack wouldn’t have happened,’?” Grimes asked rhetorically. “No. No one has. Because it isn’t what is being attacked these days.”
Barking up the Wrong Tree
Grimes believes that hardware-based security isn’t going to be any better at preventing most of the attacks prevalent today.
“Most attacks occur because of three reasons: social engineering, unpatched software, and password reuse,” said Grimes. “Hardware, by itself, doesn’t solve any of those problems.” In fact, he said as far as unpatched software is concerned, hardware can be thought of as software that’s just a lot harder to patch.
Pointing to the Known Exploited Vulnerability Catalog maintained by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Grimes said the list is full of hardware devices and firmware currently under attack by cybercriminals.
Hammering on his point further, Grimes said that back in the day, it was mostly Microsoft Windows, Google, and Apple software in the attacker’s crosshairs. While attackers still go after these popular pieces of software, their primary targets now are hardware products like routers, hardware-attached storage devices, VPNs, DVRs, and more.
The reason for this ties back to his argument, which is that most people don’t patch hardware with the same sense of urgency that they patch software, a fact that attackers are well aware of.
“I guarantee you that if this [IronKey Keypad 200 USB drive] ends up with a bug, it will take [people] far longer to patch and fix than to update Windows or some other OS component,” said Grimes.
So while hardware-based security solutions can, in some instances, make up for the shortcomings of software-based security solutions, don’t mistake them for a panacea.
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