The Importance of Hardware Security

In the light of the recent Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that are currently found in processors should provide good lessons for all. These hardware-based attacks are known as “side-channel attack”. 

This is another reminder that evaluating the security in modern infrastructure requires an understanding of the hardware that is supporting the infrastructure.

Billions of dollars have been spent on software-only malware detection, virus scanners, firewalls and much more. In truth, software security tools will never be able to provide that level of protection if the hardware is in itself insecure. A new approach is needed that provides the level of security from the hardware to the cloud.

As companies transfer to the public cloud, they face a shared responsibility model for security with the provider responsible for infrastructure security and the user responsible for application security. As these businesses put information in the public cloud, it is often on shared infrastructure that is virtualized on the same system with other tenants.

It is time to recognize the challenges that are faced with cloud computing and to accelerate innovation to new levels of isolation, privacy, and confidentiality between multiple tenants occupying the same system. Cloud providers need to be at the forefront of making these technologies available. Any innovation needs to focus on how to make these technologies easy to consume and have minimal learning curves. Security should not become an inhibitor to the business, even with high stakes.