Chance To See, re/ "All that effort just to make it somewhat more difficult to compromise important data?"
I don't think you are giving enough credit to what has actually been accomplished here with HAP. After all, the NSA has come right out and said that "it works". And by 'it', as I understand it, at a minimum they mean protection against remote attacks; those coming in via the internet. That is a huge step forward in cyber security. If spies and traitors and criminals can get their hands on your hardware, then there is still going to exist some vulnerability at this stage of the Trusted Computing development. And remember that the experts keep telling us that 'security' is never an absolute. But to eliminate the threat coming from over the net is huge IMO.
I think 'HAP' is a single product, but there will eventually be others built on the same foundation of Trusted Computing architecture, but not necessarily having anything to do with General Dynamics or VMWare or perhaps even Intel. I think that is where helpfulbacteria was coming from, but ICBW of course. Bottom line is Trusted Computing is gaining traction and it requires the TPM, so we stand a very good chance to succeed in WAVX.
