Patent ID: 8312534

Claim:
A method implemented by an information handling system, the method comprising: initializing a counter maintained in a nonvolatile memory of a security module to an initialization value; receiving, at the security module, one or more requests for a secret that is secured by the security module, the requests received from one or more requestors; releasing, by the security module, the secret to the requestors, wherein the released secret is stored in one or more memory areas accessible by the requestors, and wherein the releasing further comprises providing a first validation value to the requestors in conjunction with releasing the secret to the requestors; incrementing the counter each time the secret is released by the security module; receiving, at the security module, one or more notifications from one or more of the requestors that the secret has been removed from the memory areas accessible by the requestors that sent the notifications, wherein the receiving further comprises receiving one or more second validation values from the requestors that sent the notifications; authenticating each of the received notifications, wherein the authenticating comprises validating that the second validation value corresponds to the first validation value; decrementing the counter maintained by the security module in the nonvolatile memory each time one of the notifications is received and authenticated; and rebooting the system after the secret was released to one or more of the requestors, during the rebooting: comparing the counter to the initialization value; and scrubbing a memory that includes the one or more memory areas in response to the counter being different than the initialization value.