Patent ID: 8621551

Claim:
A device comprising: a trusted platform module, which in response to the device being initiated verifies the integrity of a boot loader before allowing the boot loader to be initiated, the boot loader in response to being initiated verifying the integrity of a virtual machine monitor before allowing the virtual machine monitor to be initiated as a trusted virtual machine monitor; the trusted virtual machine monitor configured to verify the integrity of one or more virtual machines to serve as trusted virtual machines to execute one or more agents performing one or more management operations for device computing environment safety, the trusted virtual machine monitor operable to: effectively isolate and/or guard one or more safe virtual computing machines that can be initiated on said device from one or more unsafe virtual computing machines which can be also initiated on said device, thereby allowing said one or more safe virtual computing machines to be effectively provided as one or more secure virtual computing machines which cannot be directly accessed by said one or more unsafe virtual computing machines, and allow said one or more safe virtual computing machines to effectively access said one or more unsafe virtual computing machines via said trusted virtual machine monitor, thereby allowing said one or more safe virtual computing machines to be guarded against interference from said one or more unsafe virtual computing machines and yet be able to access and/or monitor said one or more unsafe virtual computing machines; wherein at least one agent in a safe virtual computing machine is operable to perform a management function to protect the unsafe virtual computing machine from at least one security or safety risk, and the trusted virtual machine monitor protecting the at least one agent from the unsafe virtual computing machine.