Simplifying the development of secure connected nodes
New Product Development Kit for Microsoft Azure

Microchip Technology Inc. today announced that its CEC1702 hardware cryptography-enabled microcontroller (MCU) now supports the Device Identity Composition Engine (DICE) security standard, enabling designers to easily add fundamental security to embedded products.

Additionally, the new CEC1702 IoT Development Kit for Microsoft Azure IoT provides developers with all the features they need to easily implement the DICE security standard.

As hackers become more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly important for system developers to apply robust security principles when developing their products.

Developed and supported by industry experts at the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), DICE is a simple yet reliable technique that can be implemented within the hardware of security products at manufacturing time.
This architecture divides the boot process into multiple layers, generates a unique secret key along with an integrity measurement for each layer, and automatically regenerates and protects the secret key when malware is detected.

One of the key benefits of using the secure boot feature of the CEC1702 with the DICE standard is that it allows equipment manufacturers to maintain a chain of trust for multiple firmware loads. It is possible to build trust.

This is especially important for customers who are involved in authenticating system-critical commands, such as applications like power plants or online server databases.

“Designing and building secure devices continues to be a challenge for developers,” said Ian Harris, vice president of Microchip’s computing products group. “By implementing security using DICE, developers can be confident that the security foundation of their devices is based on principles developed and reviewed by industry experts.

“The full-featured CEC1702 combined with the DICE architecture provides a simple way to add key security and privacy features required for embedded systems,” he said.

For developers of cloud-connected solutions, time and ease of use are paramount. Using the CEC1702 IoT Development Kit, which supports the DICE architecture, can further reduce development time.

This kit provides a high-performance programmable 32-bit ARM® Cortex®-M4 controller and sample code to quickly develop secure cloud-connected solutions.

As we are Microsoft Azure certified, you can be confident that the components required for internet connectivity during product development have been verified and certified.

“As the IoT environment expands, security threats also increase,” said Sam George, director of Microsoft Azure IoT. “Customers can use Microchip’s IoT development kit to quickly and easily connect devices to the cloud and implement the DICE security standard into their products,” he said. “This development kit not only enables them to implement the DICE standard on their device hardware, but also leverage the security and privacy features of Microsoft Azure.”