Controversial Pentium III processor all set to storm Indian net world

Aptech Limited, for instance, found some employees going to job search sites. The company does most of its business on the internet so external mail unrelated to work could eat up bandwidth and affect performance. "We don’t monitor individual users. But we keep track of groups of users," says Renu Khurana, Chief Information Officer, Aptech. According to Khurana, the concept of a unique serial number on the hardware takes this control "one step further". With the PSN, the network manager can pinpoint to the last node in the network, which machine has been used to access, say, an objectionable site.

The processor number is added at the silicon level itself, making it tamper-proof. "It is a step towards more secure transactions. Right now, all the randomnumbers (for user authentication) are software-generated using algorithms. The PSN is hardware generated and truly random," explains G B Kumar, National Manager for Business Programmes at Intel. According to Kumar this feature was built into the chip with a view to facilitating secure commerce over the web. A number of internet service providers have welcomed this feature in the US where it was previewed on February 17, he said. "It is very critical for e-commerce transactions where money is involved," agrees M D Sam, product manager, desktops, at Wipro Infotech. For instance, an employee could misuse his user-ID and password after leaving an organisation. This will not be possible if the machine is identified by a unique number, Sam says.

Internet service provider Satyam Infoway admits this could be useful but says it is too early to comment on actual benefits. Achyut Godbole, chief executive of L&T Information Technology, said the company would not base its purchase decisions on the strength of thesecurity feature alone. Monitoring employees is not likely to play a big role either according to the Hindustan Lever spokesperson. "There are other ways to judge performance. People work best when they are relaxed and not supervised," he says. The most obvious and immediate benefit organisations perceive from the PSN is in the area of asset management. The network manager can load software remotely and allow only specific machine IDs access rights for certain kind of data. "Right now, we use a desktop management interface to keep track of all our resources. The PSN will make this easier," says Khurana. Most companies expect to save time and consequently reduce costs with better asset management. "The MIS manager can track updates, can choose to update or not to, sitting at a location in Singapore," elaborates Kumar, "Quite a few large corporations have no idea how many desktops they have. This will bring in manageability." The privacy issue has prompted Intel to give users the option of turning the PSNfeature on or off. Whenever the machine is booted it asks users to choose between enabling and disabling the feature. This is done through a software control utility which is shipped with the PC by OEMs and also available for free at the Intel website. The feature can also be turned off or at the BIOS level.