Patent ID: 7962752

Claim:
A method of supporting privacy for a computing platform having a trusted time device to provide trusted time to an application executing on the computing platform comprising: resetting the trusted time device by determining if a value in a register has been set to indicate power to the trusted time device has not been removed since a last power disruption to the trusted time device and that the trusted time device is to be initialized, and if not, waiting a period of time after determining that the value in the register has not been set, generating a new random number after waiting the period of time, and storing the new random number in the register; and initializing the computing platform after storing the new random number in the register by obtaining a current trusted time from a trusted time source, the trusted time source being external to the computing platform, obtaining the random number from the register and a counter value from a counter within the trusted time device, storing an application offset value equal to the current trusted time minus the counter value into a secure storage within the computing system, and storing the random number read from the register into the secure storage.