Authors:
Bull Tsai, Hawaii Xuan, Clare Chou, Wade Huang
Abstract:
This disclosure proposes a method of providing a more secure boot solution implemented in TGCS POS systems via the presence of a mandatory physical key.
Background:
In the Retail Environment, security features are very essential to the customers. There are more and more customers requesting that their Point of Sale systems to be secured and prevent any potential hacks or network attacks.
Password protection is very common in the field right now. but it has a very high risk that everyone knows the password and even employees no longer working for the Store can still log into the POS systems by the password.
Even with passwords, we can clear CMOS to get rid of the protection.
Description:
To ensure a boot guard feature, there are a few important items needs to be provided.
- Without a physical key detected, the BIOS will prevent the system being booted
- Without a physical key detected, the BIOS will prevent the system being flashed to any other version of the BIOS
- The secured BIOS should be in the Boot Loader area to provide the highest protection that can NOT be removed.
- In TGCS product, we do have iButton or Keylock that offers a physical key that can not be copied by any other 3rd party.
Our claim is to provide a Boot Guard version of Boot Loader implemented in the BIOS boot loader that secures the system.
For example,
If it's the 1st boot, we can offer the registration mode for you to register your iButton. And after your registration, you will need to login by your iButton or you can enter the setup menu to add any other iButton Keys.
In this case, we will be able to protect your system prior to the operating systems taking over for a more comprehensive security solution.
TGCS Reference 00399
