Valve have just announced Steam Guard, a new Steam and Steamworks feature designed to provide increased account security for gamers. Click more for the details.

The new feature will allow users to link account management options to a specific machine; an extra measure to prevent unauthorised access. Steam Guard will also notify you if any PCs attempt to log in to your account. The feature will be available for third parties to use.

Steam Guard will take advantage of upcoming Intel® Identity Protection Technology (Intel® IPT), an encrypted, hardware-based feature available with the new 2nd Generation Intel® CoreT and Intel® CoreT vProT processors.

Valve's president, Gabe Newell has said ""Account phishing and hijacking are our #1 support issues. With Intel's IPT and Steam Guard, we've taken a big step towards giving customers the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods."

Valve are due to release Portal 2 on April 21 this year. The PS3 build will feature cross-platform play with PC, and Steamworks features. Sony's console has suffered from a few serious security issues in the past few weeks, as reported on by our friends at CVG .