Everyone is wondering what lies behind Intel's acquisition of McAfee, but maybe Intel itself gave an explanation last year, in its top ten technology predictions for the next decade. One involves building on its trusted execution technology to provide "hardware-based techniques that protect at the deepest level"...
Prediction five - malware will become a thing of the past
Malware, whatever form it takes whether viruses, trojans or worms, will be beaten by hardware-based techniques that protect at the deepest level.
Today Intel has 'trusted execution technology' which is a set of processor hardware extensions and chipsets that have security characteristics such as measured launch and protected execution.
It achieves this by creating an environment in which applications can run within their own space, protected from all other software on the system.
To a degree, the success of hardware-based security is also dependent on how much effort vendors are prepared to put into securing their products. But once it is known that there is a solution that successfully addresses the problem of malware market forces will drive vendors in this direction.
For this and the other nine Intel future technology predictions, read Intel makes its top ten technology predictions for next decade >>