The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is the not-for-profit organization formed to promote "hardware enabled trusted computing"; one of the most important contributions this organization has made in the specifications for the Trusted Platform Module.
Today you can think of this as a Smart Card for your computer, it’s a great way to deal with the catch 22 problems of what secret do you use to keep a secret.
In VISTA we use this to enable BitLocker, the new volume encryption feature to protect against offline data attacks.
In any event this week in San Antonio is the regular TCG meeting, I am sitting in SeaTac airport waiting for my delayed American Airlines flight that is supposed to get me there today.
Why am I going? Well there are a number of reasons one of which is that they are working on standards around what they call Trusted Network Connect or TNC; this is very similar to the feature we have delivered in VISTA called Network Access Protection (see my earlier blog post on the topic).
Well, Microsoft has been a supporter of the TCG for a while now and I am looking forward to meeting up with the TNC members to see what they are up to.
If you’re in San Antonio and want to catch up for coffee, let me know.
Ryan