Silicon Labs advances IoT device security

1 min read

Silicon Labs has announced that its hardware and software technologies that are used to secure IoT devices against cyber threats have earned third-party IoT security certifications from both PSA Certified and the ioXt Alliance.

Silicon Labs’ Secure Vault is a new suite of state-of-the-art security features designed to help connected device manufacturers address escalating IoT security threats and regulatory pressures.

Silicon Labs' Wireless Gecko Series 2 platform already uses Secure Vault technologies combining security features such as secure boot based on hardware root of trust, secure debug, physical tamper, secure identity for attestation, and physically unclonable function (PUF) key management technology to greatly reduce the risk of IoT security breaches and compromised intellectual property. Secure Vault will also shortly be available on Silicon Labs' new EFR32MG21B multiprotocol wireless SoCs.

Secure Vault has achieved PSA Certified Level 2 certification, which is based on a comprehensive assurance framework co-founded by Arm that helps IoT security standardisation and removes security as a barrier to time-to-market. The EFR32MG21B is the first radio to attain the PSA Certified Level 2 accreditation.

“From tiny low-power sensors to high performance IoT devices, security must be built in at the chip level to ensure a strong foundation,” explained Andy Rose, chief system architect and fellow at Arm. “Silicon Labs understands the importance of this and by achieving PSA Certified Level 2, their customers can be assured of robust protection against scalable software attacks, enabling secure SoCs for mass market IoT deployment.”

Silicon Labs’ xG22 Thunderboard and EFR32MG21B development kits also achieved SmartCert security certification status from the ioXt Alliance, a recognised as a global standard for IoT security. Because the ioXt Alliance allows for certification inheritance, these Silicon Labs ioXt certifications can be leveraged by any device manufacturer using Silicon Labs’ xG22 and xG21B to greatly reduce their own device level ioXt certification time and effort.

“Threats are continuously evolving, and the demands on IoT product developers to keep up can be difficult – particularly in low cost, resource-constrained IoT products,” said Matt Johnson, senior vice president of IoT at Silicon Labs. “Securing IoT products in our connected world is a necessity as customer data and cloud-based business models are increasingly targeted for costly hacks, and IoT security requirements are quickly becoming law. Silicon Labs is committed to working with the security community, customers, and third-party security experts to deliver state-of-the-art security solutions that help protect connected IoT devices today and tomorrow. We are proud of these important IoT industry certifications, which recognize the hard work and cutting-edge security technology we are incorporating into our portfolio.”