Phoenix Technologies, a leading independent firmware supplier for PCs and computing devices, has launched FirmGuard, a cyber security product to address firmware vulnerability. Firmware is the software that connects a device’s microchips to the operating system.
Phoenix Technologies is the first UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) vendor to offer an enterprise cyber security product.
FirmGuard is a cloud-based service, which has been initially targeted at managed service providers (MSPs). It will also be offered to large enterprise and government organizations.
Gerard Moore, President and CEO of Phoenix Technologies, said:
“This is a key strategic development for us and significantly broadens our capabilities to a far wider range of customers. It is also our first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product. We are uniquely positioned to offer FirmGuard given our expertise and decades of experience in firmware.
“We have seen a steady rise in reported firmware vulnerabilities over the past five years. According to Gartner*, 70% of organizations that do not have a firmware upgrade plan in place will be breached due to a firmware vulnerability.
“Given firmware’s position in the tech stack, a successful firmware infiltration gives a malicious actor complete control of a device. FirmGuard will close the firmware vulnerability gap, perhaps before many organizations even realize they are exposed.”
FirmGuard offers an array of features to measure, manage and mitigate vulnerabilities. The product analyzes or measures the state of each endpoint. With this information, an administrator can remotely manage each endpoint with a suite of features that can be used to, for example, configure and update UEFI firmware. If problems arise, they can be easily mitigated by cloning, locking, or cryptographically wiping an endpoint’s data storage.
* Gartner Group: How to Mitigate Firmware Security Risks in Data Centers, and Public and Private Clouds, July 2019
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