www.embedded.com, Oct. 08, 2024 –
Securing devices at a hardware level has become a top concern in the ever-changing field of IoT, particularly as attacks become more complex. Since 2016, Crypto Quantique has been at the forefront of tackling these issues. In a recent interview with Embedded, Crypto Quantique's CEO and co-founder, Shahram Mossayebi, underlined the crucial need for device security in today's linked world. Established in 2016, his firm specializes in end-to-end security solutions for IoT devices. It pays especially close attention to safe cryptographic key management, an issue still difficult for the sector. Crypto Quantique offers devices with safe, unique identities by using sophisticated quantum tunneling phenomena and a groundbreaking Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) technology, therefore removing the need for conventional, often susceptible, key insertion procedures.
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs)
Physical Unclonable Function, or PUF, is a hardware device able to generate a set of arbitrary bits. PUF outputs should be unpredictable and instances should be physically unclonable and tamper-proof so that a PUF fits to provide seeds for cryptographic usage. For an ideal PUF, two key output attributes of interest are randomness, so ensuring the uniform distribution of outputs of a collection of PUF instances, and dependability, so ensuring each PUF instance returns the same, or nearly the same, string each time it is called.
As industries become more interconnected and reliant on IoT devices, security vulnerabilities have become a critical concern. Mossayebi 's path into this area began during the Mirai botnet assault of 2015-2016, which exposed IoT device weaknesses.
"We came to see that while device-level security was sometimes disregarded, the sector had mostly depended on cloud and software-based security," he stated. Crypto Quantique was founded to address these gaps with an innovative approach, focusing on hardware-based security solutions.
Mossayebi said that the sector had mostly relied on cloud-based security in the past, ignoring risks at the device level. Crypto Quantique made its own Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) technology by using quantum tunneling in transistors to make device identities safe and impossible to copy.
This method addresses key management issues in worldwide supply chains by creating cryptographic keys connected directly to the DNA of the device. Mossayebi further emphasized the value of complete security solutions across hardware. Key management, secure boot, flash encryption, and over-the-air updates–which are becoming required in industries including automotive, healthcare, and Industry 4.0–must be addressed by embedded software developers.
Crypto Quantique provides its QuarkLink platform to automate key management and security features. Combining quantum-driven PUFs, safe embedded software, and cloud-based administration under one all-encompassing approach to device security puts Crypto Quantique front and first in IoT security innovation. With major alliances in places like Taiwan and Israel, the firm is becoming worldwide and emphasizes the need for safe supply chains in the always-increasing IoT environment.