Secure Boot in PowerVM

IBM® Power Systems servers provide a highly secure server platform. IBM POWER9™ processor-based hardware and firmware includes new PowerVM® features to provide a more secure platform for cloud deployment.

The key PowerVM features available in POWER9 processor-based servers, include:
  • A secure initial program load (IPL) process or the Secure Boot feature allows only appropriately signed firmware components to run on the system processors. Each component of the firmware stack, including hostboot, the POWER Hypervisor (PHYP), and partition firmware (PFW), is signed by the platform manufacturer and verified as part of the IPL process.
  • A framework to support remote attestation of the system firmware stack through a hardware trusted platform module (TPM).

Secure Boot and Trusted Boot

For this documentation, the terms Secure Boot and Trusted Boot have specific connotations. The terms are used as distinct, yet complementary concepts.

Secure Boot
The Secure Boot feature protects system integrity by using digital signatures to perform a hardware-protected verification of all firmware components. It also distinguishes between the host system trust domain and the flexible service processor (FSP) trust domain, by controlling service processor and service interface access to sensitive system memory regions.
Trusted Boot

The trusted boot feature creates cryptographically strong and protected platform measurements that prove that particular firmware components have run on the system. You can assess the measurements by using trusted protocols to determine the state of the system and use that information for security decisions.