The method and accompanying apparatus and device protects against programming attacks and/or data corruption by computer viruses, malicious code, or other types of corruption. In one example, signature verification policy information that identifies a plurality of policies associated with a plurality of target memory segments is programmed during a secure boot process. The programmed signature verification policy information associated with each of the plurality of target memory segments is then evaluated during run-time. Signature verification is then repeatedly performed, during run-time, on each of the plurality of target memory segments based on the programmed signature verification policy information associated with each target memory segment.