Patent ID: 8505103

Claim:
A method of securing a target computing device, comprising: communicably activating, for the target computing device, an external out-of-band hardware trust anchor, the hardware trust anchor being out-of-band in relation to the target computing device; establishing, by the hardware trust anchor, a trust state of the target computing device, based upon a binding of the hardware trust anchor to a computing environment of the target computer device by: launching, by the hardware trust anchor, a virtual machine of the target computing device on the target computing device, obtaining security diagnostic information based upon measuring the target computing device including the launched virtual machine and changing a trust state of the virtual machine to a trusted virtual machine according to a verified measurement of the target computing device, and continuously maintaining, by the hardware trust anchor, the trust state of the target computing device based upon a security policy of enforcing assignment of the hardware trust anchor to the trusted virtual machine that forbids other launched computing environments from communicating with the hardware trust anchor.