2.1 KiB
title, description, ms.topic, ms.date
| title | description | ms.topic | ms.date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware security | Windows 11 security book - Hardware security chapter. | overview | 04/09/2024 |
Hardware security
:::image type="content" source="images/hardware-security-cover.png" alt-text="Cover of the hardware security chapter." border="false":::
:::image type="content" source="images/hardware-on.png" alt-text="Diagram of containing a list of security features." lightbox="images/hardware.png" border="false":::
Today's ever-evolving threats require strong alignment between hardware and software technologies to keep users, data, and devices protected. The operating system alone cannot defend against the wide range of tools and techniques cybercriminals use to compromise a computer. Once they gain a foothold, intruders can be difficult to detect as they engage in multiple nefarious activities ranging from stealing important data and credentials to implanting malware into low-level device firmware. Once malware is installed in firmware, it becomes difficult to identify and remove. These new threats call for computing hardware that is secure down to the very core, including the hardware chips and processors that store sensitive business information. With hardware-based protection, we can enable strong mitigation against entire classes of vulnerabilities that are difficult to thwart with software alone. Hardware-based protection can also improve the system's overall security without measurably slowing performance, compared to implementing the same capability in software.
With Windows 11, Microsoft has raised the hardware security bar to design the most secure version of Windows ever from chip to cloud. We have carefully chosen the hardware requirements and default security features based on threat intelligence, global regulatory requirements, and our own Microsoft Security team's expertise. We have worked with our chip and device manufacturing partners to integrate advanced security capabilities across software, firmware, and hardware. Through a powerful combination of hardware root-of-trust and silicon-assisted security, Windows 11 delivers built-in hardware protection out of the box.