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Intel (INTC) Strengthens Security Capabilities With New Tech

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Intel (INTC - Free Report) recently unveiled Control-Flow Enforcement Technology (CET) to provide enhanced security to customers.

The latest technology provides CPU-level protection from common malware attacks that are difficult to defend against by just using software. Notably, Intel CET prevents the misuse of legitimate code through attacks to hijack the control-flow of a system.

Moreover, Intel CET will provide software developers with capabilities like indirect branch tracking and shadow stack. While indirect branch tracking offers protection against jump/call-oriented programming (JOP/COP) attacks, shadow stack protects systems from return-oriented programming (ROP) attacks.

Intel CET will be first available on Intel’s upcoming ‘Tiger Lake’ mobile processor. It is also expected to be available for desktops and servers in the upcoming days.

Due to increasing threat of memory related malware attacks that target operating systems and browsers, Intel’s efforts to boost the security of its chips hold promise. Moreover, it is likely to boost its adoption and instill investors’ optimism in the stock.

Notably, shares of Intel have returned 0.4% in the year-to-date period compared with the industry’s rally of 12.7%.

Intel Corporation Price and Consensus

Strength in Hardware Security Bodes Well

The announcement of Intel CET is part of the company’s Security First Pledge, which aims at providing the best hardware-based security options to customers and protecting their data. Further, Intel is working with Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) to integrate Intel CET support into the Windows 10 OS, a preview of which is already available on Windows 10 Insider Previews.

Notably, the company has been focused on integrating security capabilities into its products with minimal performance impact. In February, Intel announced four new security features for its products that include application isolation, VM and container isolation, full memory encryption, and Intel platform firmware resilience. These features help customers to protect their data and hardware from a wide range of cyber-attacks.

Moreover, Intel had launched a set of open source libraries last year, which enabled customers to build IT solutions that create isolated areas of computing on Intel processors. The greater level isolation helps protect servers from advanced threats like zero-day attacks.

These initiatives are expected to boost momentum for Intel’s processors as there is a significant rise in demand for robust processors integrated with strong hardware security functionalities. As hackers are becoming more sophisticated, they have been increasingly targeting hardware to steal proprietary data or set up backdoors for future use.

Per TrendMicro’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), 63.2% of the 1097 vulnerabilities discovered by ZDI from 2019 till date were memory safety related. Also, widespread rollout of AI has made it easier for attackers to identify weaknesses in both hardware and software.

Intel, which currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), will likely gain an edge against competitors like Advance Micro Devices (AMD - Free Report) and Qualcomm (QCOM - Free Report) as major security flaws have recently been discovered in their respective chips. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Notably, AMD’s processors have a vulnerability comprised of two exploits — Collide + Probe and Load + Reload — which can be used to gain access to sensitive data, while two vulnerabilities discovered on Qualcomm chips can used by malicious apps to gain full root access.

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