Officials at Phoenix Technology said the BIOS as we know it is dead. The Milpitas, Calif.-based concern Monday announced a new core system software (CSS) that takes digital security, data recovery and network management out of the application space and into the hardware. It's a grand statement for a company who's sole reason for being is the little-seen and barely-understood "firmware" that runs between the hardware and the operating system. For the past couple years, however, the company has been working on a BIOS built around the network, not just the standalone PC. Tim Eades, Phoenix vice president and general manager of marketing and products, said the company has seen more and more of the PC core security and networking management moving outside the machine and onto the intranet or Internet. "What we're now seeing is that the PC is just the end-point on a network, and on the network you have to be compatible with the standard on the network," he said. The framework for Phoenix's new network-centric firmware is the device-networked architecture (dNA), which officials say are modular software building blocks for PCs working on the network. It's broken down into four areas: trust, manageability, connectivity and usability. InternetNews has more on this topic.