Happy birthday to the 19" equipment rack, which turns 100 next month. From the July, 1923, Bell Systems Technical Journal: "All panels are to be of a uniform length, designed to mount on vertical supports spaced 19>< inches between centers. The height of the different panels will vary, according to the amount of apparatus in each unit, but this vertical dimension is in all cases to be a whole multiple of 1-3/4 inches."

Some authentication means are more secure than others: using a hardware device designed to store a private key without making it possible to ever extract it is more secure than storing the private key in a file. Unfortunately the most secure ones are also more painful to use. Users who have their keys on a device need to carry the device with them, need to type their PIN code every time they initiate a SSH session, etc. This makes it quite difficult to advocate ways more secure than passwords and files for use cases where the security of the access is not the priority.

So the question is: is it possible to store the authentication material more securely than in a file (which can be stolen by some malware), without changing the user experience?

And the answer is: yes, using a TPM!