SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

- This doesn't align with our approach, PC giant tells us

"Yet another top-tier PC maker seemingly isn't interested right now in Microsoft's vision of hardware-level security for Windows 11 systems.

Dell won't include Microsoft's Pluton technology in most of its commercial PCs, telling The Register: "Pluton does not align with Dell's approach to hardware security and our most secure commercial PC requirements."

Microsoft launched to much fanfare its Pluton security layer for PCs in 2020 after developing it with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. Pluton effectively bakes a co-processor in silicon that securely stores encryption keys, credentials, and other sensitive information. The idea being that this data is kept close to the CPU cores, within the same processor package, thwarting attempts extract the secret info by, say, snooping an external bus.

It also allows Microsoft to define a base level of security features in the chips that Windows runs on. For instance, Pluton provides a Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a technology required by Windows 11."

"Over to Lenovo

Lenovo told The Register its Intel-powered ThinkPads "will not support Microsoft Pluton at launch."

But ThinkPads introduced in January with AMD Ryzen 6000 processors will include Pluton as it's present in those AMD chips, though the feature will be disabled by default. AMD has provided an option for users to turn the feature on and off. Lenovo's ThinkPad X13s, which has Qualcomm's Arm-compatible Snapdragon 8cx Gen3 chip, includes Pluton.

HP declined to answer questions on its stand on Pluton, saying it doesn't comment on future or unannounced products."

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/09/dell_pluton_microsoft/ [theregister.com]

Original Submission