Highly secure coprocessor supports Arduino® and ARM® mbed™ platforms, assures easy prototyping 

New Delhi, India—Addressing the many issues related to system security in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) installations, the MAXREFDES143# embedded security reference design from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (NASDAQ: MXIM) provides protection against counterfeit sensor data, guaranteeing its authenticity and integrity along the entire data chain, from transducer to the cloud.

The rapid growth of IoT capabilities for industrial applications comes with legitimate concerns about data integrity, due to deliberate corruption of critical sensor data anywhere between a source and the cloud. The reference design’s sophisticated architecture and components, Arduino-compatible hardware interface, and ARM mbed libraries support simplifies development of secure, uncorrupted, and authenticated sensor-to-web data. It is ideal for analog sensor node and data authentication in factory automation and industrial processing applications.

The reference design’s two-stage hierarchical architecture consists of a shield that communicates to a web server, and a protected sensor node for data acquisition and authentication. The shield includes a Wi-Fi module; a DS2465 secure coprocessor for offloading SHA-256 cryptographic computation; 1-Wire® and I²C interfaces; user-interface LCD, LEDs, and pushbuttons; along with alarm and logging functions. The sensor node contains a DS28E15 secure authenticator, DS7505 temperature sensor, and MAX44009 light sensor.

Key Advantages

• Fast Time-to-Market: Significantly reduces development time using the provided hardware and source code to implement an authenticated node solution and web server interface
• Ease-of-Use: Free evaluation web server provides an immediate out-of-the box implementation for real-time data collection and storage of sensor data
• Secure: SHA-256 coprocessor offloads data authentication task; securely stores node authentication key; each node has a unique key

Commentary

• “The reference design is a powerful, much-needed tool for addressing the genuine issues of data security and authentication for Industrial IoT installations,” said Scott Jones, Executive Director, Embedded Security, Maxim Integrated. “The reference design combines the shield and sensor node to offer a solution with a high level of security and minimal development start-up effort, and with low system-overhead burden.”
• “Enabling robust security and data integrity is critical to the continued adoption of IoT solutions,” said Michael Horne, Vice President of Marketing and Sales, IoT Business, ARM. “The MAXREFDES143# simplifies testing with ARM mbed-compatible development boards, allowing designers to rapidly develop resilient industrial IoT platforms.