BIOS, Heal Thyself. HP's EliteBooks to Ship With SureStart Security Technology

Amid a number of security related announcements, HP has stated that the upcoming HP EliteBook releases will include a new security technology called SureStart. SureStart is the industry's very first attempt to produce a BIOS that self-heals. Subsequent PC releases will also include the technology.

Malware continues to be a big concern for IT organizations, and there is a growing number of incidents where craftily architected programs attempt to alter or change the PC at the hardware level, entering through the PC's BIOS instructions. On boot, when an EliteBook identifies that the BIOS has been attacked or corrupted, the SureStart technology will kick in to rewrite the BIOS to its original state to eliminate the threat and keep the malware bits from affecting the operating system functions. The original BIOS image is stored on the PC to guarantee it is always available for comparison.

Windows 8.1 offers improved security at the OS level, but some types of malware attempt to load before the OS is fully loaded, inserting itself in the layers between hardware boot and OS boot so that the miscreant software can continue to function after the operating system has been fully loaded into memory.