The Role of Physical Security in IoT

By Arm Ltd

March 14, 2019

Securing the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to become more important as the value of assets, and number of connected devices, continues to increase. The distributed and fragmented nature of IoT means a larger attack surface and physical access (proximity) to the devices. The combination of these two factors make physical security a viable and potent threat. There are many examples of how a lack of sufficient physical security can pose a severe security risk to the IoT ecosystem and the effects of a security breach can quickly snowball. For example, a system that uses fingerprint authentication for identity access. First the hacker overcomes authentication which provides access to personal data, access to credit card information and more, and once one device has been hacked, the hack is applied remotely enabling access to thousands of devices.

Arm has identified four types of vulnerability that should be considered when designing a system-on-chip (SoC); software, communication, lifecycle and physical. If one of these vulnerabilities isn't protected, the whole system becomes compromised, so it is important to ensure all necessary mitigation measures are considered and implemented at the very beginning. A range of counter-measures are recommended to ensure that all attack opportunities are mitigated.

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