Secure IoT System Boot with a Hardware Root of Trust
By Dana Neustadter, Product Marketing Manager, Security IP
The Internet of Things (IoT) is here. Billions of connected entities from simple temperature sensors and wirelessly controlled power outlets, to complex home gateways, smart homes, smart cars and smart cities, are proliferating at a rapid pace and there are many more to come. This creates huge opportunities for businesses and consumers; however, it also brings serious challenges when grappling with a complex ecosystem comprised of a wide variety of systems, their data, and their communication.
Security is fundamental to the successful adoption of the IoT. Connected devices operate in an environment where attacks can originate from anywhere and must be capable of adapting to an evolving threat landscape, yet consumers are just becoming aware of risks that come with the advent of vast networks of devices all around them revealing bits of information about them. With the rise in the number of these devices and the value of data stored in them, security has to be multi-faceted and “baked-in” from the lowest levels of system-on-chip (SoC) design through to the applications that run on them. In addition, communications between devices and services frequently need to be secured.
One of the first tasks that the security subsystem has in any embedded device is to bring the processor out of reset to a known run state with trusted, authorized firmware running on the device, which can be done using a product such as DesignWare® tRoot Vx Hardware Secure Module or tRoot Fx with Programmable Root of Trust. This article discusses how this is done using the DesignWare tRoot Vx Secure Hardware Root of Trust.