The rise of the internet of things era has increased awareness for the integration of the physical world into digital systems. While the digitization of our everyday lives led to efficiency improvements and economic benefits, it has also placed pressure on systems designers who are now required to come up with innovative IoT products capable of performing secure connection and data exchange while maintaining low power consumption. Since security and power consumption are both key requirements in IoT application, Nuvoton has developed the NuMicro® M235x Series, which excels in supporting the proliferation of intelligent connected devices.
In addition to the M235x products, NuMicro® Family series also has built-in security technologies that can improve system security. Among them, the Secure Bootloader program can support the Trusted Boot function, the hardware encryption accelerator including AES, RSA, ECC algorithms can reduce the load of the main processor in the encryption and decryption operations, XOM (eXecute-Only Memory) can define eXecute-Only Memory area to protect key code, Flash lock bits are designed to prevent the debugging interface of Flash memory from being accessed or written by the outside, tamper detection pins can be used to detect the state change on the pins linking to system boards for intrusion detection. Here is a simple summary for all NuMicro® IoT Security Technology.
| MCU System Security | |
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Secure Boot Secure Bootloader in ROM with Driver APls |
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Device Identification Unique ID, Customer Unique ID |
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Isolation TrustZone-M, TrustZone-A, Peripheral Privileged Mode, Trusted Security Island (TSI for MPU) |
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Flash Memory Protection Read/Write Protection, eXecute-Only Memory (XOM), Dual-Bank with Bank Swap |
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System Anti-Tampering Tamper Detection Pins, RTC Domain Backup Registers |
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Chip-Level Security Temperature Sensor, Clock Function Monitor, Voltage Glitch Detection |
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| Crypto Security | |
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TRNG, Hardware Accelerators, Secure Storage TRNG, DES/3DES, SHA, AES, RSA, ECC, Power Side-Channel Attack Mitigation for AES/RSA/ECC, Secure Key-Store, China SM2/SM3/SM4 |
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| Product Lifecycle Security | |
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Product Lifecycle Management Booting Status Monitor, Lifecycle Management, Firmware Version Counter |
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Secure Debug Debug Authentication (temporarily unlock), Debug Port Management (DPM) |
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| Software and Service | |
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Product Lifecycle Management Security Reference Software and Provisioning Key Generation Tool, Firmware Image Signing Tool, OTA Update, Key/Certificate Provisioning Service |
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Being committed to providing an easy development experience, Nuvoton offers a wealth of resources to support for assurance of IoT Security. For compiler selection, Nuvoton supports the development on Arm® Keil MDK, IAR Embedded Workbench for Arm® and GCC. Furthermore, the Keil MDK Nuvoton Edition for M0/M0+/M23 Series is free to use. For supporting tools, M235x Series offers helpful tools to aid the project progress. For example, the TrustZone Template Generator could assist the security state planning and the secure firmware building; the CryptoTool could support the cryptographic requirements of M235x series, including key generation, key exchange, signature, encryption and decryption. For security project developing, Nuvoton offers NuSMP (Nuvoton Secure Microcontroller Platform) of integrated security technologies. The application note, sample code and training videos for each technology would be available for developers to access and reference. Lastly, the Multi-RTOS (Real-Time Operating System) for IoT solutions and the SEGGER emWin for interactive interfaces.
