On October 14 Wednesday, USITO hosted a roundtable discussion meeting with the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). The half-day meeting was comprised of two sessions: the first session between TCG executives and USITO member company representatives, the second half between TCG and the international communications including the U.S. Embassy, EU Chamber of Commerce, and the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association. Both sessions were well attended by a total of 30 plus participants, and the discussions were heated and quite fruitful.

TCG is the ad hoc group that focuses on trusted computing technology, which is aimed to make computers safer, less prone to viruses and malware, and thus more reliable from an end-user perspective. The technology will also allow computers and servers to offer improved computer security over that which is currently available. During both sessions, TCG executives firstly updated the participants the latest technology development and policy environment. According to TCG, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a computer chip promoted by TCG, has been adopted by more countries and companies with the market keeping expanding. TPM is able to securely store artifacts used to authenticate the desktop PCs or laptops; it can also be used in computing devices other than PCs, such as printers, mobile phones or network equipment.

So far, world leading chip manufacturers Intel and AMD, hardware manufacturers such as Dell, and operating system providers such as Microsoft are all including (or plan to include) Trusted Computing into the existing and coming generations of products. TCG as a consortium of these companies now boasts approximately 140 companies engaged in creating specifications that define PC TPMs, trusted modules for other devices, trusted infrastructure requirements, APIs and protocols necessary to operate a trusted environment. TPM has become the world mainstream trusted computing technology - to date over 200 million branded PCs and laptops with TPMs were sold. Server produces are beginning to ship, and a variety of applications based on TPM, such as secure email or file encryption, have been implemented using TCG specifications. Trusted Network Connect (TNC) products that use TCG principles to enhance the security of communications are shipping, too.

TCG has so far successfully aligned with quite a few Chinese stakeholders to jointly develop the TPM technology, including Lenovo, Huawei, Tsinghua University, to name a few. TCG also acknowledged the hardships to promoting the technology on the ground. The meeting participants worked out several issues to be followed concertedly, and agreed to make exchange of such kind a regular one.

USITO continues to encourage open and market-oriented standard setting approaches, which would help address the increasingly complicated interoperability issue between the computing devices. Any closed or non-transparent standard setting effort will likely lead to serious security problems and hinder the industry's development. TPM adopts standard security procedures and shared specifications, which thus enable components of the trusted environment to interoperate. So USITO would like to recommend the TCG initiatives in the trusted computing field to our Chinese industry counterparts, and help promote the wider use of this world prevailing trusted computing methodology.

During the two sessions with TCG, the participants also discussed the challenging ICT policy environment on the ground. The Chinese state encryption authorities have been recently reinforcing implementation of the 1999 China commercial encryption rules, which required any imported IT products that contain encryptions must obtain relevant licenses from the Chinese government. Though the policy once faded away thanks to global industry outcry, it again reared its head in recent months: a few overseas companies reported their chips held up in the customs; the encryption authorities glorified the 1999 rules by hosting a large-scale expo in August to commemorate the rules' 10th anniversary. Facts of this kind shall be incorporated in marketing strategies for TPM's introduction into the Chinese market.