{"id":7499,"date":"2019-09-20T16:41:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T16:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teguar.com\/eu\/?p=7499"},"modified":"2025-10-29T15:18:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:18:24","slug":"what-is-a-tpm-computer-chip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teguar.com\/eu\/en\/what-is-a-tpm-computer-chip\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Trusted Platform Module?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"TPMTrusted Platform Module (TPM) chips are used in all types of computers from personal laptops, to business computers, to industrial panel PCs, to medical computers. TPM secures your data with a secure algorithm integrated into your computer hardware. It provides a higher level of security than software alone and protects your data from hackers, malware and thieves. This is especially important for industrial computers, which can store massive amounts of data about your business, and medical computers, which can store sensitive patient data. TPM is widely accepted as the most secure method of protecting information stored on a computer. This blog provides an overview of TPM and how it is used in industrial and medical computers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who Created TPM?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Trusted Computing Group<\/a> (TCG) created TPM in 2003, the first widely used version being TPM 1.1. TPM 1.1 was updated to TPM 1.2, and then to TPM 2.0, the current version and standard. TPM 2.0 is standardized by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Exchange Commission) under ISO\/IEC 11889.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is TPM?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are five types of TPM: Discrete, Integrated, Firmware, Software, and Virtual. You can read about them in this brief from TCG<\/a>, but this blog will focus on Discrete TPM, because it is the most common form, it\u2019s the most secure form, and it\u2019s what we use in Teguar computers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discrete TPM is in the form of surface mount integrated circuit and is mated to the computer\u2019s motherboard. Other types of TPM are favorable for smaller devices, such as smart phones, as they would not take up valuable real state on smaller computing devices, but they do not have the full tamper proof protection of Discrete TPMs. Many computers, including several product lines from Teguar, come with a TPM chip by default, but the TPM is inactive until it is enabled in the BIOS. It will not affect the computer in anyway, the chip will lay dormant, until activated. However, when activated, a user may notice a slower boot up process with the OS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does TPM do?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\"ComputerTPM is a hardware based security feature and it safeguards the data on your computer. It ensures that no unintended users gain access to your data by either stealing your computer or hard drive or via a software attack or brute force attack. A brute force attack is a \u201ctrial and error method,\u201d as explained by SearchSecurity.com<\/a>, and the attacks \u201ccommonly use automated tools to guess various combinations of usernames and passwords until they find the correct input.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCG explains<\/a> that Discrete TPM protects your device from being hacked, \u201cvia even sophisticated methods. To accomplish this, a discrete chip is designed, built and evaluated for the highest level of security that can resist tampering with the chip, including probing it and freezing it with all sorts of sophisticated attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does TPM Work?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When you boot a computer, TPM checks the state of the computer and the state of the computer\u2019s environment. If the computer is in a trustworthy state (i.e. it has not been tampered with), it will operate normally. If the computer is not in a trustworthy state, it will not boot, meaning there is no way to access or extract any data from the computer. Things that would trigger an untrustworthy state include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n