Microsoft, Intel and Goldman Sachs Lead New Supply Chain Security Group at TCG
Microsoft, Intel and Goldman Sachs will lead a new work group focusing on supply chain security at the Trusted Computing Group (TCG).
TCG is a non-profit organization that develops, defines and promotes open and vendor-neutral industry specifications and standards for trusted computing platforms, including the widely used Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
TCG has several work groups, including for cloud, embedded systems, infrastructure, IoT, mobile, PC clients, servers, software stack, storage, trusted network communications, TPM, and virtualized platforms.
The organization this week announced a new work group focusing on supply chain security. Representatives of Microsoft, Intel and Goldman Sachs will lead the new group, which will work on developing guidance for supply chain security standards.
The new group has two main objectives: provisioning (ensuring that devices are genuine) and recovery (helping organizations recover after a cyberattack). TCG noted that while solutions can be costly in the short-term, organizations will pay less for them compared to the costs resulting from a cyberattack that brings down the entire supply chain.
“The hardware supply chain is difficult to secure due to the number of stages, organizations, and individuals involved and current security methods are mostly subjective and require human intervention,” TCG said. “As malicious and counterfeit hardware is extremely difficult to identify, most organizations do not have access to the tools, knowledge, or expertise to successfully detect it. With guidance from the Supply Chain Security work group, those in the supply chain will be better equipped to protect against cyber threats.”
Several high-impact supply chain attacks came to light over the past year, including ones involving SolarWinds, Codecov, and Kaseya.
Related: Intel Announces Compute Lifecycle Assurance to Protect Platform Supply Chains
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Related: Google Intros SLSA Framework to Enforce Supply Chain Integrity
Related: Huawei and Supply Chain Security – The Great Geopolitical Debate
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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