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All About the New Spectre x360 13 Security Upgrades & the Partnership Behind it

HP is a long-time player in the laptop industry thanks to their laptops’ reliability, quality, and performance. Their Spectre laptops embody these qualities, currently ranking as some of the most popular laptops you can buy right now.

Knowing this, I shouldn’t be surprised that many people were hyped after reading the press release for HP’s new Spectre, the Spectre x360 13. The new Spectre 13 is a reiteration of last year’s Spectre 13, and typically, a reiteration doesn’t do much except offer minor improvements across the board.

However, the new Spectre 13 not only offers many moderate improvements, but significantly improves upon the security of the Spectre 13. How does HP accomplish this? With a few buttons and a partnership.

Ok, allow me to explain.

 

The Main Security Upgrades

Allow me to start by listing off the main security upgrades revealed in the press release.

First off, we have the built-in privacy screen (which is optional). When checking out on HP’s site, they will be offering an option to include a built-in privacy screen. I say will because unfortunately, despite announcing the option in the press release, the privacy screen will not be available until January 2020. Still, it’s a nice option to have.

Next, we have a couple of new buttons located on the laptop. The first button is the new kill-switch for the webcam, which will turn the webcam on or off completely, depending on which one the user deems necessary.

The second button incorporates the same system for the internal microphone, but instead of being a cool-sounding kill-switch, it’s just a simple mute button. Hey, you take what you can get, especially when muting yourself is now much easier than having to go into Windows settings.

Of course, all of these security upgrades sound great, but there’s one thing on the press release that caught my attention when I read it and still impresses me. This surprise comes to us in the form of a partnership.

 

The New Partnership

For the release of the Spectre 13, HP partnered with ExpressVPN, a popular VPN company. This partnership entails a couple things:

1. It allows ExpressVPN to come preinstalled on all new Spectre 13s.
2.  It allows ExpressVPN to hand out 30-day free trials to users of the new Spectre 13.

While these may not sound that special, keep in mind that many people aren’t aware of the existence of VPNs. Laptop users benefit from using a VPN as well, as many laptop users tend to hang out in public areas on public networks–prime targets for hackers and cybercriminals.

The VPN market has been growing for the past decade, but there’s no such thing as too much data tunnelled through VPN servers, so HP partnering with ExpressVPN is a great thing to see and hopefully encourages other tech companies to bring awareness to cybersecurity companies.

 

Conclusion

The new Spectre x360 13 promises a lot in its press release, from performance improvements to some impressive upgrades to the display. However, none of these improvements gets me as excited as the security improvements HP is making to the new Spectre.

While these security improvements (and the partnership) don’t sound all that impressive, take a second to think about the influence they may have on other tech companies.

After all, tech companies like to play it safe, so if HP succeeds in bringing awareness to cybersecurity with their product, then other companies will follow. Sooner or later, the tech industry will shift into an industry focused on cybersecurity–an industry I’ve been looking forward to for years and years.

Maybe I’m dreaming and none of this will happen. However, I’m willing to take that risk, and for now, I’ll entertain the idea of HP and ExpressVPN leading the charge for a more secure future on the Internet.