Intel Editorial

Advancing Industrywide Compute Lifecycle Assurance

The following is an opinion editorial from Leslie Culbertson of Intel Corporation.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191204005239/en/

Leslie S. Culbertson is an executive vice president and general manager of Product Assurance and Security at Intel Corporation. (Credit: Intel Corporation)

The globalization of technology design, development, manufacturing and distribution has created an environment of complicated supply chains with limited transparency. There is a growing need to provide assurances of platform integrity in every stage of the compute lifecycle, and to do so in a manner that is as transparent as possible. Government agencies, commercial organizations and consumers deserve this transparency and the benefit it can bring for improved platform security and resiliency.

This presents both an incredible challenge and opportunity for the ecosystem. Today, Intel is responding to the challenge with the introduction of our Compute Lifecycle Assurance Initiative.

We have tackled big, complex problems like this before and we are doing it again. Intel has already taken several important steps toward supply chain transparency. We actively led and collaborated with the industry to influence policies and processes concerning the use of conflict-free minerals — not only for Intel products — but across the industry. In addition, we have already developed a set of policies and procedures at our own factories to validate where and when every component of a server was manufactured. These examples represent an important beginning, and there is more that can be done.

In today’s increasingly complex environment, we want to provide our customers with a full range of tools and solutions that deliver assurances of integrity throughout the entire lifetime of a platform. This starts with a security-first approach to design. It continues as platforms change custody, ownership and physical location several times during their assembly, transportation and provisioning. Once operational, they may then require updates for optimal performance and security. Finally upon retirement from service, platforms should ensure the confidentiality of data that was transmitted, erased or stored.