How Arduino Benefits from Security Certification
Many companies are moving towards Industry 4.0. They’re using the real-time data that’s being gathered by the connected devices in their factories to enable them to closely monitor their assets. The extra insight is helping them streamline processes, improve efficiency, and reduce costs and downtime. However, adding connectivity to existing equipment or introducing new connected solutions in busy or critical industrial environments can be a struggle.
Existing solutions have typically been built to be reliable rather than flexible, fortunately though the Arduino platform (hardware, software and cloud infrastructure) provides effortless integration and flexibility, without trading on security. Arduino products and services are designed to play nice with third-party solutions, integrating into existing infrastructures or with other brands’ components easily. Arduino are agnostic and at heart an open company, meaning that industrial customers can add that last mile connectivity through Arduino without needing to touch their existing solutions. Our platform also enables customers to stay ahead of another significant industry development – the increasing threat of cyberattacks.
The Importance of Security for the Industrial IoT
Industrial environments are complex – operators rely on a combination of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). The OT can be used to monitor and run production lines, control systems, or infrastructure that is vital to society, for example, power or water supplies. Connecting this equipment – to create an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) system – may expose operators to new vulnerabilities and a cyberattack that disrupts or stops important functions may be costly for the organization and their communities.
For that reason, security is now top-of-mind for many customers within industry. They want to know that their devices have the right level of protection built in from the ground up. Our Portenta X8 system-on-module (SOM) with YoctoLinux® OS has security at its heart. It’s designed for industrial, smart city and agricultural applications and enables over-the-air updates and artificial intelligence and machine learning at the edge. It features the PSA Certified NXP Semiconductors i.MX 8M Mini applications processor with Arm® Cortex®-A and Cortex®-M processors. That gave us a firm foundation to build on and we strengthened the security of the device further. As Fabio Violante, CEO at Arduino, explained in an earlier blog, “Security is of paramount importance in every connected application. All Arduino connected products, even the entry level ones, have secure elements to ensure maximum protection to the users. We believe security is a fundamental prerequisite for IoT.”
The Portenta X8 is part of the Arduino PRO SOM solutions that have been designed to protect customers from a wide range of attacks on industrial applications. My colleague, Marta Barbero, Senior Product Manager at Arduino, has previously said: “All Arduino Pro boards are provided with a hardware secure element, able to securely lock customers’ products, not only from a hardware perspective but also from a software perspective, enabling features like secure booting and encrypted communication with Arduino or 3rd-party Cloud platforms.”
However, for Arduino, security goes beyond the device because the hardware and software we’re developing enables others to build a wide range of solutions for industrial, building automation and smart agriculture applications. To help us establish trust in our products, we’ve chosen to certify them at PSA Certified Level 1.
Security Certification Helps Build Trust
By having the Portenta X8 independently assessed and certified at PSA Certified Level 1, we can assure our customers and the wider ecosystem that we’ve considered the possible threats to the device and taken action to protect it and our customers’ data and networks from common vulnerabilities. We can also easily demonstrate that we comply with the increasing number of security standards, regulations and requirements that are being introduced and that vary from region to region.
For us, the main benefit of partnering with PSA Certified is knowing that we’ll be meeting these international regulations. It means we can provide our customers with peace of mind and we can do that in a straightforward way.
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“The benefits of partnering with PSA Certified is mostly the ability to have a standard set of regulations. We can provide peace of mind to customers in a pretty straightforward way.”
The assurance also helps Arduino in our mission to develop products that simplify and democratize technology, which is becoming increasingly important to our customers.
You can hear more about our approach and the evolving connected device landscape in this one-minute video.
