IBM to launch security chip embedded in hardware

International Business Machines Corp. plans to launch a security system that it hopes will set the industry standard for protecting confidential documents such as those used in the growing area of electronic commerce.

Unlike security measures that rely on ‘firewalls’, IBM has developed a security chip embedded within the computer hardware, which, it says, adds additional levels of security. The first IBM computer to include the security chip will be the PC 300PL. The company plans to eventually include the security features in all of its products. The chip will come installed in the hardware with no additional cost to the customer. The features of the security chip include key encryption, which encodes text messages, and ‘digital signatures’, which act as unique ‘watermarks’ that identify the sender of the document.