Microsoft believes thunderbolt leads to security concerns.

Microsoft Surface series is one of the most popular laptop series in the market. But have you noticed they lack thunderbolt ports which are an integral part of flagship laptops like surface? Neither do they have removable RAM. Why don’t they? This question has been answered by Microsoft’s employee in a Surface Engineering Webinar. So, Why Microsoft Believes thunderbolt leads to security concerns.

Well as explained by Microsoft’s employee in their webinar it is a DMA port i.e. Direct Memory Access. What that means in simple words – “If you have a memory stick well prepared to steal data from any laptop, then with DMA it has all the access it needs to your memory. This makes it far much easier for such sticks to steal data”. With this said, Microsoft’s engineers believe thunderbolt ports can deliver the level of security surface laptops need.

Apple stopped making upgradeable MacBooks years ago. But, most people failed to understand the security reason behind it. In the Webinar, Microsoft engineers explained why Non-Removable RAM is necessary for security. The Engineers explained if we take a removable RAM and froze it with Liquid Nitrogen. After which if put in a specific reader you can get access to all its data. That is quite a reasonable reason for using Non-Removable RAM.

You might be surprised to know that Microsoft is blaming thunderbolt port-security risks. However, the truth is Microsoft’s surface is incompatible with high data transfer speeds of thunderbolt port. Because Windows 10 does have kernel-level security built-in for thunderbolt ports. Companies like Dell, Lenovo, and others have been using these ports for quite some time.

But the Surface laptops do offer the uniqueness of data transfer, power delivery, and video support all in one cable with magnetic positioning. Stay tuned! Stay Blessed!