System and method to secure boot both UEFI and legacy option ROM's with common policy engine

摘要

In some embodiments, the invention involves using a policy engine during boot, in the driver execution environment (DXE) phases to authenticate that drivers and executable images to be loaded are authenticated. Images to be authenticated include the operating system (OS) loader. The policy engine utilizes a certificate database to hold valid certificates for third party images, according to platform policy. Images that are not authenticated are not loaded at boot time. Other embodiments are described and claimed.