Dell is stepping in to protect the boot layer of PCs, tablets

Dell’s business laptops and tablets will get an extra layer of protection from hackers with a new security tool being loaded into the company’s portable computers.

The new Dell security tool focuses on protecting the boot layer so PC hardware or software don’t malfunction. It secures the low-level UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface), which sits in a protected layer above the OS. An attack on this firmware can compromise a system at boot time.

Hacking the firmware can cause the OS and hardware components to malfunction. Hackers have shown increasingly sophisticated ways in which the UEFI — which has replaced the conventional BIOS — can be infected with malware. 

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