Secure Boot
Table of contents:
A big question these days is: How much freedom are you willing to give up for more security? - and vice versa. A good applicable example is Windows XP, which has possibly become one of the most exploited operating systems.
With Windows 8, Microsoft has made every effort to prevent this from happening again by fully embracing a security architecture that it had been working on for a long time: the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). In essence, UEFI does everything the BIOS did, but it also works as a kind of standalone operating system, making your operating system accessible, intact, and legitimate before you boot it
How exactly does it work?
The function of Secure Boot is to prevent the execution of any software that is not signed and certified by the manufacturer, so that any threat that attempting to attack during startup would be thwarted, as the system would stop booting. Of course, this for example leaves out of play the possibility of installing Linux distributions.
And this is where we asked ourselves the question I was asking at the beginning. The function of Secure Boot is to be totally restrictive with any non-certified software, since otherwise it would not be a good security system. No distinctions of any kind are made; if it is not certified it does not run. Are you willing to give up the ability to install unsigned software for added security?
However, the user can always choose to disable it from the control panel (see your motherboard manual to find out how).
How do I activate it?
To see if UEFI is being used you will have to access the BIOS/UEFI BIOS of your motherboard and consult it. For example, in the attached image you can see a blue band on one of the icons of a hard drive where UEFI can be read. This obviously indicates that UEFI is being used on that drive.
In this same BIOS you can activate and deactivate the use of UEFI, depending on whether you consider it necessary to have the possibility of installing unsigned software or not. It is a decision that the user must make, since at no time is he forced to remain in one way or another.
