Whenever I hear about Intel and "security" features, the only thing that ever comes to mind is government backdoors (in particular, NSA and black-hat hacker) and, making life more difficult for anyone who isn't using the latest version of Windows. If I were really that paranoid about my security being breached at such a low-level, I'd rather just have a good firewall, or use a VM. I don't want Intel (or AMD for that matter - they're not much better about this) shoving their "features" down my throat. If they can be disabled, that's fine. But usually you can't toggle them. I don't care if government agencies spy on me; that's not my issue. What I care about is these things interfering with my experience as a user, and giving people a false sense of security. Meanwhile, companies like Gigabyte have to waste their time (and everyone else's) patching vulnerabilities.