The March 2015 Surface Pro 3 firmware update, delivered on March 26, includes a number of new features and updates, including changes to the Surface Pro Unified Extensible Firmware Interfacee (UEFI), which adds support for enterprise disk encryption and other security and provisioning changes.
A post on the “Surface for IT Pros” blog (which I found courtesy of Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrott), itemizes these UEFI changes in detail.
Specifically, the changes allow IT admins to configure the UEFI in Surface Pro 3 devices for corporate deployments. They enable the modifications to the boot process; the ability to make the devices more secure by disabling hardware ports on the devices; and the ability to disable boot from network (PXE). The update also adds an interface to allow UEFI configuration settings to be managed remotely.
“In an upcoming update, we will be releasing a downloadable tool that commercial customers can use to configure UEFI settings on their devices,” according to the notes about the update.
There’s also a Surface Pen Settings driver-related update that came out on March 10 that “enables new functionality and features for the Surface app found in the Windows Store.” As Microsoft notes on its Surface History Web sites, Surface updates are provided via Windows Update, meaning they are delivered in stages to customers. “As a result, not every Surface will receive the update at the same time, but the update will be delivered to all devices. If you have not received the update then please manually check Windows Update later,” the site says.
The Surface Pro 3 seems to be the only one in the Surface family of ARM- and Intel-based devices which received a firmware update this month.
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