Intel Open Port: Intel vPro Expert Center Blog : Tags : danbury

Encryption Technology as we know it today had it's beginnings over 4000 years ago stemming back to Egyptian hieroglyphs and cipher codes and Intel is working on delivering a hardware based data encryption technology to make it a simpler task for desktop users to secure data. Intel's Encryption Technology (codename Danbury) is due to be released with the next generation vPro "Eaglelake" chipset in 2008. As you can see in the image, the next generation of vPro technology will contain 45nm CPU, the Eaglelake Chipset, Danbury Technology, and Intel GbE network components.

Most likely, if you've heard about Intel Danbury Technology it was during IDF 2007 and some software vendors (Credant & Wave Systems) have already announced their partnership as well for the "to be released" technology.

Intel's Director of Business Client Architecture, Steve Grobman gave an audio cast at IDF, very informative, and if you missed it you can listen here. Steve was also recently interviewed in this article Intel adds Encryption to vPro which elaborates a bit more on the technology. Danbury Technology will help IT Administrators deal with challenges in data encryption on the desktop.

While I can't divulge too much information I'd like to bring some of the key 'look ahead' points in Danbury Technology:

Danbury Technology can work in standalone mode or in conjunction with Intel Active Management Technology (iAMT) as they both share the Management Engine "common services" architecture for networking, security, and provisioning tools and applications.
Expect increased performance in a hardware based encryption solution versus existing software encryption technologies
Danbury Technology is OS agnostic - no OS drivers will be needed for data encryption
Both in-band and out of band remote solutions will work with PBA (Pre Boot Authentication)
Full drive encryption is available for SATA and e-SATA drives, including Intel Matrix Storage Technology

So why does Danbury Technology matter to IT/IS administrators? Why would a company want to encrypt their desktop data? If you don't know the answers to those questions - I suggest you checkout Credant Resource Center (login required) or Wave Systems Trusted Computing Primer

As more items become available for public consumption, I hope to spread the word through the vPro Expert Center Blog section... so keep reading!