Power/Performance Costs Of Securing Systems


For much of the chip industry, concerns about security are relatively new, but the requirement for protecting semiconductor devices is becoming pervasive. Unfortunately for many industries, that lesson has been learned the hard way. Security breaches have led to the loss of sensitive data, ransomware attacks that lock up data, theft of intellectual property or financial resources, and loss o... » read more

Automotive IoT Security By Design


A good example of the wider adoption and application of IoT devices is in automotive uses. It’s a growing market, with the worldwide number of IoT-connected devices projected to increase to 43 billion by 2023, an almost threefold increase from 2018. The modern vehicles that host so many IoT devices are increasingly connected—for cellular over-the-air updates, but also potentially to comm... » read more

Hardware Root of Trust: Everything You Need To Know


As explained in our “Secure Silicon IP Webinar Series“, a root of trust is the security foundation for an SoC, other semiconductor device or electronic system. However, its meaning differs depending on who you ask. For example, the hardware root of trust contains the keys for cryptographic functions and is usually a part of the secure boot process providing the foundation for the software c... » read more

Implementing Secure Boot With A Root Of Trust


A boot sequence describes the initial set of operations performed by a device at the start of the boot process. During this stage, available resources reside in some form of local, nonvolatile storage that is readily accessible by the device. The entity initiating the startup sequence is known as a boot loader (or bootstrap loader). The boot loader enables forward progression throughout the ... » read more

Achieving Security Goals With A Hardware Root Of Trust


In an environment of growing threats, meeting a fundamental set of security goals is imperative for safeguarding devices and data from attack. The most robust means of meeting these goals is a root of trust anchored in hardware. In Microsoft’s “The Seven Properties of Highly Secured Devices” white paper, property #1 is implementation of a hardware root of trust. As Microsoft explains: ... » read more