IBM has started using Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) for its SoftLayer cloud services to strengthen the security of the cloud system to chip level, with an aim to boost hybrid cloud deployments.
The company said the chip level security will give assurance to customers who want to move sensitive and mission-critical operations to the cloud.
IBM SoftLayer CTO Marc Jones said: "Security perception remains the biggest hurdle for wide-spread enterprise cloud adoption.
"SoftLayer is the only bare-metal cloud platform offering Intel TXT, leading the industry in enabling customers to build hybrid and cloud environments that can be trusted from end-to-end."
TXT is built into Intel’s Xeon processors and it verifies the components in a server to check its authenticity, and to check whether the components have been replaced by malicious components that could tamper the original data.
Intel TXT claimed to verify the components of a computing system from its operating system or hypervisor all the way to its boot firmware and hardware.
The verification will permit or deny a workload from running on that select server system.
Intel Security Group VP said: "It is becoming increasingly important to provide cloud environments with the same, if not greater levels of security as your on premise technology environments.
"By building on IBM’s history of security innovation, with this solution based on Intel TXT, SoftLayer is demonstrating that such levels of cloud security are now possible and available."
SoftLayer customers will have to order bare metal servers available with Trusted Platform module (TPM) in it to use TXT.
Once the Installation is completed TXT will allow its clients to certify a particular pool of resource about its security.
