
Intel said it is embedding dedicated product security experts throughout the company as part of new effort to stay ahead of future security threats.
The plan is among new details the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker provided on Friday for its new Product Assurance and Security group, which was established in January in the wake of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that were disclosed at the beginning of the year.
Leslie Culbertson, who was appointed leader of the group in January, wrote in a Friday blog post that the Product Assurance and Security team is "designed as a center of security excellence — a sort of mission control — that looks across all of Intel." The group's task is looking "longer-term at the evolving threat landscape and continuously improving product security in the years ahead."
[Related: New Intel High-Performance CPU Brand Expected To Push PC Channel Sales ]
To do that, Culbertson said the group has centralized the company's best security talent while also ensuring that product security experts are embedded throughout the organization.
Intel also sees opportunities to create deeper partnerships with academic researchers and security experts "to accelerate security innovation throughout the entire industry," Culbertson wrote. Furthermore, she said the company believes that collaboration with operating system and software vendors, systems manufacturers, cloud providers and other chipmakers is essential for the future.
"We expect bad actors will continuously pursue increasingly sophisticated attacks, and it will take all of us – working together – to deliver solutions," Culbertson wrote.
The semiconductor company already saw this level of collaboration after the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities were, Culbertson said, which she hopes will continue.
"My challenge to the industry is to maintain the same level of collaboration we demonstrated is possible earlier this year," she said. "If we can continue to work together at that scale, imagine the possibilities."
The newly established Product Assurance and Security group is part of Intel's security-first pledge. The company has already issued software patches in Intel products from the last nine years to protect against Spectre and Meltdown, and it plans to release processors in the second half of this year with hardware-level protection. At the same time, Intel has decided to not issue patches to certain older CPUs due to "limited ecosystem support and customer feedback," the company said earlier this week.
Wallace Santos, CEO of Maingear, a Kenilworth, N.J.-based system builder and Intel partner, told CRN that Intel's new security plans fall in line with what the company has been telling him.
"For us, we think Intel handled it properly. We thought the communication was very good once we become aware of the situation, and we think the action plan is good too," he said.
related stories
Video
trending stories
sponsored resources

Trend Micro
Managed Security 360

HubStor
Cloud Backup 360

Cysurance
Cyber Insurance 360

Tenable
Cyber Risk 360

Products of the Year Showcase

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Cloud Learning Center

Bitdefender
Cybersecurity 360

EPOS
EPOS

Fujifilm
Fujifilm

Application Integration 360

Mimecast
Mimecast

Comcast
Comcast Business Learning Center

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Server Learning Center

WatchGuard
WatchGuard

Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Storage Learning Center

Carbonite
Cloud Storage 360

Sophos
Sophos Cybersecurity Learning Center

Webroot
Webroot Learning Center

BlackBerry
BlackBerry Learning Center

NPD
Industry Trends 360

Symantec
Symantec Business Security Learning Center

Veeam
Veeam

Channel Chief Showcase

Acer
Remote Workforce 360

Sherweb
Sherweb

APC by Schneider Electric
Digital Services for Edge Learning Center

VMware

StorageCraft
Disaster Recovery Learning Center

Vertiv
Edge Computing Learning Center

Wasabi
Wasabi

Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies Hybrid Cloud Learning Center

Cradlepoint
5g for Business 360

eSentire
Managed Detection and Response 360

Comm100
Industry Trends 360
