UEFI Forum Announces the Latest Initiatives Geared Toward Strengthening Boot Phase Security

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Forum announced its latest initiatives to educate and support developers as UEFI firmware-driven embedded devices proliferate.

Reporting a UEFI-based threat or vulnerability can be confusing given the complex supply chain for computing devices and their embedded firmware. The UEFI Forum alleviates that challenge with its newly formed UEFI Security Response Team (USRT). The USRT provides a central site for security experts, researchers and end-users to report such threats and, when warranted, establish a direct point of contact for troubleshooting. Ultimately, the Forum will share critical data with other security groups to improve systems security industry-wide. Visit the USRT site here.

People interested in learning first-hand about the USRT can join UEFI Forum Board member and USRT chair Dick Wilkins, Ph.D., during the November 12 IEEE Security Conference in New Jersey. Dr. Wilkins will provide information about the current state of system security and controls, as well as an introduction of the USRT and its involvement in helping to resolve the current security attack landscape. To register for this conference, click here.

Lastly, the UEFI Forum announces its next Plugfest—an interoperability testing event that enables members to exercise product implementation best-practices. This Plugfest will be held in Taipei, Taiwan from October 13-17. Plugfest attendees can test solutions based on the UEFI v2.4 specification and are invited to attend technical presentations.

For more information about the UEFI Forum’s activities, please visit www.uefi.org.

About The UEFI Forum

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Forum is a world-class non-profit industry standards body that works in partnership to enable the evolution of platform technologies. The UEFI Forum champions firmware innovation through industry collaboration and the advocacy of a standardized interface that simplifies and secures platform initialization and firmware bootstrap operations. Both developed and supported by representatives from industry-leading technology companies, UEFI specifications promote business and technological efficiency, improve performance and security, facilitate interoperability between devices, platforms and systems, and comply with next-generation technologies.