root of trust (RoT)

The Roots of Trust (RoT) form the roots of trust in Trusted Computing. The Roots of Trust provide the functions that the operating system trusts. They form the cryptographic processor technology for the Trusted Platform Module( TPM) embedded on the personal computer or mobile computers.

Root of trust functions include immediate encryption of drives, detection of unauthorized access and tampering with the operating system, programs and data, detection of rootkits, backup of stored data to prevent changes to the data set, and digital rights management.

In addition to the software-dependent Roots of Trust, there is also the hardware Root of Trust. The protection hardware root of trust provides a trusted execution environment (TEE) and supports one or more cryptographic functions. It also has a simple user interface that the host can interact with. In addition to the trusted functions mentioned above, a root of trust must have a secure central processing unit that runs the secure software. When software runs on the CPU, runtime data must be protected. These may contain secret keys and other sensitive data.