Industry Expert Blogs

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When it comes to security, the main objective is to establish trust. Trusting users can be subjective and ambiguous, therefore modern technology has been designed to give different types of users different level of trust, and formulate corresponding mitigation measures. The designers of every new application and device need to consider the cost-benefit ratio of adding security features. All security can eventually be breached given sufficient time and resource, therefore a primary goal is to increase protection and security to a level where an attack on a device is deemed uneconomical.

Arm IP can be found in billions of electronic devices today, ranging from low-end IoT sensors to high-end enterprise hardware. The real value doesn’t lie in the physical device, but in the data contained inside. An example of this could be in the medical industry. In recent times, vulnerabilities have been discovered in embedded medical electronic devices, exposing an urgent need to improve security to protect patients and hospital infrastructure.

The potential attack surface grows every day, thanks to the ever-expanding network of connected devices. Thus, security needs to be considered and implemented for all elements - from a secure handshake with trusted agents, right down to data encryption to prevent unauthorized accesses to sensitive information. One of the most common parts of the system frequently compromised for attacks is the debug element.