For improved security, what should be set on UEFI systems?

In UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) systems, setting secure boot options is crucial for enhanced security. Secure boot is a feature designed to ensure that only trusted software is executed during the boot process. When secure boot is enabled, the firmware checks the digital signatures of the operating system and any bootloader against a list of authorized signatures. If malicious software or an unauthorized operating system attempts to boot, secure boot prevents it from executing.

This feature significantly helps protect against rootkits and boot-level malware, as it only allows signed and vetted software to run at startup. This layer of security ensures the integrity of the system right from the boot phase, establishing a foundation for overall system security.

While password protection, user authentication protocols, and network encryption are indeed important components of security, they do not specifically address the integrity of the boot process itself in the way that secure boot does.