12th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors Datasheet, Volume 1 of 2

Datasheet

ID Date Version Classification
655258 28/10/2021 00:00:00 Public Content

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Document Table of Contents

Boot Guard Technology

Boot Guard technology is a part of boot integrity protection technology. Boot Guard can help protect the platform boot integrity by preventing the execution of unauthorized boot blocks. With Boot Guard, platform manufacturers can create boot policies such that invocation of an unauthorized (or untrusted) boot block will trigger the platform protection per the manufacturer's defined policy.

With verification based in the hardware, Boot Guard extends the trust boundary of the platform boot process down to the hardware level.

Boot Guard accomplishes this by:

  • Providing of hardware-based Static Root of Trust for Measurement (S-RTM) and the Root of Trust for Verification (RTV) using Intel architectural components.
  • Providing of architectural definition for platform manufacturer Boot Policy.
  • Enforcing manufacturer provided Boot Policy using Intel architectural components.

Benefits of this protection are that Boot Guard can help maintain platform integrity by preventing re-purposing of the manufacturer’s hardware to run an unauthorized software stack.

Note:Boot Guard availability may vary between the different SKUs.