Micron Technology and Microsoft today announced a collaboration that aims to address the challenge of providing trusted computing models for IoT deployments in industrial, automotive and consumer environments.
The new solution utilizes a hardware 'root of trust' integrated into Micron's flash memory in the IoT device along with the Microsoft Azure IoT cloud to establish a trusted link between that IoT device and the cloud.
At the Hannover Messe 2017, Micron has also announced a new IoT security technology called Micron Authenta that helps enable strong cryptographic device identity and device health management in flash memory. 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. This enables more advanced functionality like hardware-based device attestation and provisioning, as well as allows an administrator to securely remediate the device if compromised in the field.
Micron's Authenta Technology provides protection for the lowest layers of IoT device software, starting with the boot process. The approach of utilizing existing standard flash memory sockets enables system developers to harden system level security without adding additional hardware components.
In addition to the hardware, Microsoft and Micron today announced that they will offer software development kits (SDKs) that help make it easier to provide secure IoT cloud management and connectivity for new platforms and devices, as well as the ability to retrofit legacy systems.
Micron's Authenta Technology is initially available in the Serial NOR product family and is sampling now to select customers. Users of Microsoft's DICE technology and Azure IoT services can now contact Micron and Microsoft to begin evaluation and integration of these security and identity solutions.