Secure credential management

An apparatus, comprising:

• a computer readable storage to store an authentication data associated with a connectivity authentication process (CAP);
• an authentication supplicant (AS) logic to provide a response to an authentication communication (ACM) associated with the CAP;
• an authentication management (AM) logic to receive the ACM from a connection management (CM) logic associated with a host operating system (HOS) to which the apparatus is operably connected, where the AM logic is to selectively provide the ACM to the AS logic, and where the AM logic is to provide the response from the AS logic to the CM logic;
• a Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC) logic to provide a firmware-based, independently powered virtual SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) implemented in a secure memory of a manageability engine (ME) to support two or more different authentication processes;
• a device management (DM) client logic to provide a secure connection to an operator DM server associated with the CAP and to selectively provide authentication data to a network module associated with the HOS;
• and
• a host embedded control interface (HECI) logic to provide bidirectional communication between the HOS and the apparatus where the HOS is to support a connection management (CM) logic to proxy communications between an external network authentication logic and the apparatus, and an HECI logic to provide bidirectional communication between the apparatus and the HOS;
• the AS logic, the AM logic, and the DM client logic being resident in firmware that is not executable by the HOS, the firmware resident in a micro-controller in a controller hub arranged as part of a chipset of a computing platform operative to execute the HOS, wherein the firmware is not accessible to a central processing unit (CPU) of the chipset and the chipset and the micro-controller comprise different power sources.