Pluton Is How Microsoft Plans To Revolutionize Windows Safety For PC Users

Microsoft has announced its latest security measure to keep Windows users protected from malicious attacks.

The tech major has collaborated with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. to come up with Microsoft Pluton security processor, the chip-to-cloud security technology, pioneered in Xbox and Azure Sphere.

Reuters

Microsoft says that the new processor will make it ¡°significantly more difficult for attackers¡± to camouflage under the Windows OS. The new Pluton processor is a step towards integrating security within the CPU, where hardware and software are closely knit together. In a new blog, Microsoft explains that such an application can prevent ¡°entire vectors of attack¡± in a world where notorious elements are ever evolving.

The Pluton security processor has been built to enable end-to-end security on Windows platform. This protection stretches from the edge to the cloud, all the way down to the hardware. Microsoft says that such a holistic security capability enables it to better guard against physical attacks, prevent the theft of credential and encryption keys, as well as recover from software bugs.

How is Pluton made secure?

Microsoft Pluton (Image: Microsoft)

Microsoft highlights a multi-pronged approach to make Pluton the most secure processor for the Windows ecosystem. The most important of it, is its ability to contain sensitive data like encryption keys isolated from the rest of the system. For this, it uses the Secure Hardware Cryptography Key (SHACK) technology to ensure that the keys ¡°are never exposed outside of the protected hardware, even to the Pluton firmware itself,¡± says Microsoft.

Through these measures, the new security processor by Microsoft is able to protect credentials, user identities, encryption keys, and personal data, even if an attacker installs malware or has complete physical possession of the PC.

Another major security problem solved by Pluton is keeping the system firmware up to date across the entire PC ecosystem. In an age when updates to security firmware are received from a number of different sources, there is always a risk of running patching issues.

Pluton solves this by providing a ¡°flexible, updateable platform¡± for running firmware. It also promises to provide end-to-end security that is authored, maintained, and updated by Microsoft. It will be integrated with the Windows Update process ¡°in the same way that the Azure Sphere Security Service connects to IoT devices,¡± Microsoft explains.

Not new

(Representative Image: Microsoft)

The Pluton concept is not new. Microsoft first introduced it back in 2013 as part of the integrated hardware and OS security capabilities in the Xbox One console. Even then, it was built in partnership with AMD, within Azure Sphere.

Microsoft claims to have learnt a lot on how to use the processor to mitigate a range of physical attacks. It is now taking its learnings to the next level by enabling the chip-to-cloud security on the future Windows PCs. ¡°We believe that processors with built-in security like Pluton are the future of computing hardware,¡± it says.