Look up Computrace; it's very similar in operation but is installed by default in most BIOS' as a theft-prevention measure.
Admins managing servers can also opt to buy a server with physical BIOS write-protection, wherein the user will need to put a jumper or turn on a dip switch in order to update the BIOS.
Motherboards with hardware write-protected BIOSes were common around the turn of the century, when flash EEPROMs started replacing EPROMs for BIOS storage. Too bad the amount of tiny extra BOM cost and what seems to be increasingly buggier BIOSes that require frequent updates has made them mostly disappear...
I wonder how much the "it can always be updated later" mentality prevalent today has lead to a higher defect rate in code - it seems to me that if it's harder to change something once it's released, there is more incentive to get it right the first time. I can't remember there being any significant bugs with BIOS in the early machines I used (386/486 era) and those basically never needed to be updated; although PCs have gotten considerably more complex since, especially with things like UEFI, perhaps not all of that complexity is warranted and it wouldn't have manifested itself if BIOS' had remained difficult-to-modify?
Admins managing servers can also opt to buy a server with physical BIOS write-protection, wherein the user will need to put a jumper or turn on a dip switch in order to update the BIOS.
Motherboards with hardware write-protected BIOSes were common around the turn of the century, when flash EEPROMs started replacing EPROMs for BIOS storage. Too bad the amount of tiny extra BOM cost and what seems to be increasingly buggier BIOSes that require frequent updates has made them mostly disappear...
I wonder how much the "it can always be updated later" mentality prevalent today has lead to a higher defect rate in code - it seems to me that if it's harder to change something once it's released, there is more incentive to get it right the first time. I can't remember there being any significant bugs with BIOS in the early machines I used (386/486 era) and those basically never needed to be updated; although PCs have gotten considerably more complex since, especially with things like UEFI, perhaps not all of that complexity is warranted and it wouldn't have manifested itself if BIOS' had remained difficult-to-modify?