Collaboration aims to strengthen IoT device security

Secure Thingz and Renesas Electronics Corporation announced their collaboration aimed at ensuring secure Internet of Things (IoT) applications are more easily developed on leading microcontrollers, and that a secure production flow is available to deliver a secure global supply chain. As part of the collaboration, Renesas will support the Secure Thingz Secure Deploy architecture for the secure provisioning of the Renesas RX family of MCUs. The Renesas RX65N will be one of the first MCUs to be featured when Secure Thingz’s Embedded Trust platform is launched to the broader market in 2019.

According to ABI Research, by 2022, an estimated 70 percent of the world’s 57 billion connected devices will be targeted for the IoT, yet today, less than four percent of new devices have embedded security. Analysts estimate in the next couple of years 25 percent of cyberattacks will target IoT devices, and that could have serious ramifications for the IoT, where incoming threats and system vulnerabilities can result in life-threatening or high-risk situations. Embedded applications for the IoT need to remain secure across their lifecycle and comply with forthcoming legislation.

The Renesas RX family of 32-bit MCUs delivers high performance with high power efficiency, and is well suited to address the needs of secure embedded applications for the IoT. As part of their collaboration, Renesas and Secure Thingz are also teaming up on the creation of a next-generation secure development tool that will make it easier to implement security with the Renesas RX family at device inception.

Additionally, Renesas’ RX65N/RX651 MCUs incorporates Trusted Secure IP (TSIP), which offers robust key management, encrypted communication, and tampering detection to ensure strong security against external threats such as eavesdropping, tampering and viruses. The collaboration between Renesas and Secure Thingz will help make security solutions easier for users to implement.