Complete Security

Our vision on security is to create a secure software environment: one that is secure from the booting of the system to the running of the application. The users will know that they can trust the machine from the time they switch the power on.

With HP-UX, Hewlett-Packard expects to be able to build a secure kernel. The Itanium architecture allows increased levels of security. There are four privileged levels that system software writers can actually access to select the given level of security for programs and users. Some systems today have four levels of protection, but most lack the four separate protection keys that Itanium will carry.

This allows for a more compartmentalized system of security so that different levels can be tailored to specific parts of the software program and thwart crackers, hackers, and other malicious users who would like to crash the system.