Secure Mobility – Featuring the VIA PadLock Security Engine

Viruses, Worms, Hacking and Identity Theft have become terms that are now part of mainstream computing. As a result, security of our personal information is now emerging as the single biggest issue in computing today. Every week, more and more articles appear, about valuable company and personal identity information being stolen by thieves physically gaining access to data stored in particular on notebooks.

To help in the fight against this threat, the VIA C7-M processor integrates the VIA PadLock™ Security Engine to enable U.S. Government standard encryption, enable protection against worms, and provide quantum based random numbers to form a solid foundation for encryption.

When enabled, the VIA PadLock™ Security Engine can be used to make data unreadable to unauthorized readers by encrypting information in real-time. This means that if a notebook computer is stolen, the encrypted contents become completely unreadable to the thief. Worms that cause Notebooks to not run properly or allow information to be stolen from the hard drive, are stopped dead in their tracks by the VIA PadLock™ Security Engine. Voice over IP and Instant Messaging are also kept safe from hackers listening in with VIA PadLock™ enabled applications.

In a typical notebook to implement such functionality in software is very time consuming and CPU intensive. With the VIA PadLock Security Engine, not only can the security functions be performed at many times the speed, but the main processor is freed to do the job the user wants it to do (playing a movie properly or running a spreadsheet efficiently), and overall power consumption is drastically reduced for longer mobile operation. These features combined with the rest of VIA PadLock's suite of tools, gives front line defense against information theft and empowers secure mobile computing.

¹ Elements of the VIA PadLock Security Engine have been evaluated by various leading information security specialists. View the evaluation reports here.