Security has become a must-have for all stakeholders, including end users, and experts are urging that security be considered from the product design stage.

Kim Ki-nam, a senior vice president at Microchip, emphasized the importance of security in his presentation titled “The Importance of Security and Getting Started with Easy and Fast IoT Design” at the e4ds webinar on the 15th.

Security is a key consideration because it protects your brand image from loss of revenue due to personal information protection, product hacking, and other threats, as well as protecting your revenue stream by blocking counterfeit products and counterfeit supplies.

Security is essential to ensuring continuous profits.

Failure to consider security from the initial product design can expose many vulnerabilities.

If security is not in place, attackers can control applications or insert malware via serial communication, and collect confidential data such as connection passwords, which can be used to compromise the entire system.

The embedded security architecture consists of: reliable hardware, anti-counterfeiting and intellectual property protection, secure updates related to firmware updates, secure connections that provide secure connections, and application security.

Trusted hardware consists of secure boot and keys and algorithms that verify the integrity of the running software. Secure boot includes code signing and firmware validation at boot time.

Depending on the MCU you're using, secure boot may already be available for firmware validation. Microchip's SAML 11 provides secure boot based on immutable boot ROM. If your MCU doesn't have this capability, you can implement secure boot by adding the ATECC608 secure element.

A secure element stores private keys in a secure, unexposed area and provides security algorithms. Since most MCUs lack the ability to securely store and process private keys, adding a secure element can be a good option.

Assuming that attackers already understand the system's security algorithms, the security key must be securely protected. Because a third party with knowledge of the key's location could falsify sensitive information and impersonate a user's identity, the key must be protected by secure hardware that is physically impervious to attack. Keys must be securely managed and installed during manufacturing in a scalable and cost-effective manner.

Security key installation, or provisioning, requires significant costs, including the hardware security module (HSM) for storing the manufacturer's secret keys, a person responsible for managing security software, and a secure element that generates keys for each device in the project and acts as a vault to securely store them. These generated keys must remain confidential throughout the entire product lifecycle, including manufacturing. Because the equipment required to securely handle keys, certificates, and other data on the production line is expensive, establishing a secure platform on the production line can be challenging.

Protecting product revenue from unauthorized duplication is also essential. The protected items may not be the main body or actual product itself, but rather the batteries, accessories, or disposable cartridges that are incorporated into the system. These systems typically use cost-effective, compact MCUs. Anti-counterfeiting helps prevent overproduction and duplication, and maintain control over the supply chains of contract manufacturers.

Protecting intellectual property within system code is also crucial. Therefore, signed code is required and must be verified before execution. This protects genuine systems from unverified code while also preventing code from running on unauthorized, cloned systems.

Authentication between the host and client must ensure secure communication. This helps protect against attacks that attempt to intercept data.

Encrypted data can include signatures and timestamps. Enhancing signatures with timestamps mitigates the risk of repeated exposure of identical signatures, as the signatures are periodically updated. In the initial stages of setting up secure communication, you should use a trusted authority certificate to establish the connection and then encrypt the data in transit to protect it.

When asked what the advantages of using an authentication chip are, Microchip replied, “When the authentication process is completed using a security chip such as the ATECC608, key information such as key values are stored in a physically secure location inside the chip,” and “This method can also defend against physical attacks (such as side-channel attacks).”