HP today released the findings of a global survey highlighting the growing concern over nation-state threat actors targeting physical supply chains and tampering with device hardware and firmware integrity. The study of 800 IT and security decision-makers (ITSDMs) responsible for device security highlights the need for businesses to focus on device hardware and firmware integrity, with attacks on hardware supply chains and device tampering expected to increase.
Key findings include:
- Almost one-in-five (19%) organizations surveyed say they have been impacted by nation-state threat actors targeting physical PC, laptop or printer supply chains. In the US, this figure rises to 29%.
- Over a third (35%) of organizations surveyed believe that they or others they know have already been impacted by nation-state threat actors targeting supply chains to try and insert malicious hardware or firmware into devices.
- Overall, 91% believe nation-state threat actors will target physical PC, laptop or printer supply chains to insert malware or malicious components into hardware and/or firmware.
- Almost two-thirds (63%) believe the next major nation-state attack will involve poisoning hardware supply chains to sneak in malware.
Considering the scale of the challenge, it’s unsurprising that 78% of ITSDMs say their attention to software and hardware supply chain security will grow as attackers try to infect devices during transit.
Organizations are concerned that they are blind and unequipped to mitigate device supply chain threats like tampering. Over half (51%) of ITSDMs are concerned that they cannot verify if PC, laptop or printer hardware and firmware have been tampered with during transit. A further 77% say they need a way to verify hardware integrity to mitigate the risk of device tampering.
In recognition of these risks, HP Wolf Security is advising customers to take the following steps to help proactively manage device hardware and firmware security, right from the factory:
- Adopt Platform Certificate technology, designed to enable verification of hardware and firmware integrity upon device delivery.
- Securely manage firmware configuration of your devices, using technology like HP Sure Admin (for PCs) or HP Security Manager (Support). These enable administrators to manage firmware remotely using public-key cryptography, eliminating the use of less secure password-based methods.
- Take advantage of vendor factory services to enable hardware and firmware security configurations right from the factory, such as HP Tamper Lock, Sure Admin, or Sure Recover technologies.
- Monitor ongoing compliance of device hardware and firmware configuration across your fleet of devices.
Watch this space: Further findings from the study will be shared later this year.
About the data
The survey was conducted by Censuswide on behalf of HP Inc. from the 22nd February – 5th March 2024. It is based on a survey of 803 IT and security decision-makers in the US, Canada, UK, Japan, Germany, and France. The survey was carried out online.
BREAKING: Google Ruled To Be An Illegal Monopoly
Posted in Commentary with tags Google on August 5, 2024 by itnerdWell, this is groundbreaking. A judge has ruled that Goole is an illegal monopoly:
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US District Judge Amit Mehta Mehta wrote in Monday’s opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
The decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia is a stunning rebuke of Google’s oldest and most important business. The company has spent tens of billions of dollars on exclusive contracts to secure a dominant position as the world’s default search provider on smartphones and web browsers.
Those contracts have given it the scale to block out would-be rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, the US government alleged in a historic antitrust lawsuit filed during the Trump administration.
Now, said Mehta, that powerful position has led to anticompetitive behavior that must be stopped.
Specifically, Google’s exclusive deals with Apple and other key players in the mobile ecosystem were anticompetitive, Mehta said. Google has also charged high prices in search advertising that reflect its monopoly power in search, he added.
Those contracts have long meant that when users want to find information, Google is generally the easiest and quickest platform to go to, which in turn has fueled Google’s massive online advertising business.
While the court did not find that Google has a monopoly in search ads, the broader strokes of the opinion represent the first major decision in a string of US-government led competition lawsuits targeting Big Tech. This case in particular has been described as the biggest tech antitrust case since the US government’s antitrust showdown with Microsoft at the turn of the millennium.
Now you should keep in mind that the judge hasn’t determined what the penalties for this behaviour are going to be. And you can bet that Google will fight this as hard as they can. But I can say one thing, which is that others in the tech space are likely watching this very closely because they could be next.
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