Patent ID: 7987512

Claim:
A method comprising: initiating a hardware interrupt, at regular intervals, by an embedded controller of a computing device; in response to the interrupt, executing a lower provisioning module at the regular intervals, the lower provisioning module stored in a basic input/output system (BIOS), the lower provisioning module configured to enforce one or more policies that describe how a functionality of the computing device is controlled, the lower provisioning module further configured to: determine whether to constrain functionality of the computing device based on a balance stored in the BIOS, the balance comprises an amount of time the computing device is available to a user, wherein an adjustment to the balance results in the computing device entering one or more operating modes comprising: a full function mode enabling the computing device to execute one or more application modules using full resources of the computing device, a reduced function mode permitting limited execution of the one or more application modules, or a hardware lock mode preventing execution of the operating system; detect and counter, using a tampering module, attempts to tamper with the balance stored in the BIOS; in response to the attempts to tamper with the balance, output, using the tampering module, an identification code to remove the hardware lock mode; and receiving at the lower provisioning module a provisioning packet to regain access to a functionality of the computing device.