Hardware Partnership to Enable High-Level Security

Hardware Partnership to Enable High-Level Security

hardware

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Micron Technology and Microsoft have recently announced a collaboration in order to address the major challenge of providing trusted computing models for IoT deployments in industrial, automotive and consumer environments. The new solution will utilize a hardware ‘root of trust’ integrated into Micron’s flash memory in the IoT device along with the Microsoft’s IoT cloud to establish a strong trusted link between that IoT device and the cloud.             

Micron has also announced not long ago a new IoT security technology called Micron Authenta that helps enable strong cryptographic device identity and device health management in flash memory. The concept of monitoring persistent memory storage is becoming more and more critical to understanding a device’s health. By using Microsoft’s support of Device Identity Composition Engine (DICE), an upcoming standard from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), the combination of the Microsoft Azure IoT cloud and Micron® Authenta™ Technology helps ensure that only trusted hardware gains access to the IoT cloud.

The key aspect of the combined solution is that the health and identity of an IoT device is verified in hardware on the device where critical code is typically stored. The approach of utilizing existing standard flash memory sockets enables system developers to harden system level security without adding additional hardware components, leading to a more affordable IoT solution.

“Microsoft and Micron are collaborating to provide customers with a unified approach to improve IoT security. This capability will speed up adoption of the latest IoT concepts by enabling customers to broaden their IoT connectivity while decreasing the investment of implementation,” said Sam George, director of Azure IoT cloud services in Micron’s press release. “Combining these technologies will enable critical security competencies to be underpinned at a low-level in both hardware and software so that users can quickly begin to add their value to these solutions without many of the resource burdens that have been repressing innovation in the industry.”

“A secure Internet of Things requires an always on trust between billions of end-points and cloud management services. Anchors of this trust must be rooted in hardware and be scalable to even the smallest embedded devices,” said Amit Gattani, senior director of Segment Marketing, Embedded Business at Micron. “We’re pleased to see Microsoft extending their Azure IoT platform to include such trust services and creating an ecosystem with partners like Micron that provide hardware root of trust building blocks for end-devices. This will significantly ease developments and deployments for our customers across Industrial, Automotive and Consumer IoT markets.”