New developer kit helps secure IoT devices

The rapid growth in numbers of IoT devices has seen them become a favored attack route for cyber criminals. This has left companies looking for a way to integrate strong security into millions of devices.

To address this problem, security platform Mocana is launching a new developer kit that provides businesses, who may not have deep cybersecurity or cryptography expertise, with a way to simplify the integration of hardware-based security features into IoT devices.

The Mocana IoT Security Developer Kit (DevKit) includes Mocana’s IoT security software modules integrated with an Infineon Technologies OPTIGA TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip on a Raspberry Pi 3 model B computer. It includes an API layer and abstraction platform that simplifies integration with hardware-based security features, and a secure cryptographic engine for asymmetric and symmetric ciphers. It also offers secure transport for SSL, SSH and Wi-Fi, plus secure key and certificate storage and management.

"Expecting developers to understand the more than 3,000 pages of documentation on the proper implementation of TPM is impractical," says Srinivas Kumar, vice president of engineering at Mocana. "Our DevKit provides an easy-to-use developer interface that greatly simplifies and accelerates the development and testing of critical IoT security functions based on hardware security -- in this case a TPM chip."

The kit includes sample applications to allow developers to use the Mocana security API layer to generate TPM keypairs and leverage TPM functionalities, establish SSL or SSH connections with TPM keys and certificate-based mutual authentication, set up secure connectivity to a wireless access point, generate TPM keys and more.

"Industrial device manufacturers, IoT solution providers and contract manufacturers are demanding solutions to accelerate the integration of TPM technology," says Steve Hanna, senior principal at Infineon. "Mocana's IoT Security DevKit, which integrates our OPTIGA TPM hardware, is a comprehensive low-cost solution for anyone looking to harden IoT devices and underlying software with TPM cryptoprocessors."

You can find out more about the DevKit on the Mocana website.

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