Secure element protects connected IoT devices

Consumer devices, home appliances, industrial assets, and infrastructure controllers are already connected to the internet or will be soon. Many of them are designed to be autonomous and unattended. They now need state-of-the-art electronic security to prevent hackers from counterfeiting, cloning, stealing information, or misusing the equipment. ST’s new STSAFE-A100 is a secure turnkey solution that brings the Company’s proven expertise in electronic security for applications such as banking, e-commerce, and identity protection to the IoT. As a secure element that provides authentication services and can be used in conjunction with an ordinary microcontroller, it features an embedded secure operating system and is certified to Common Criteria EAL5+^[1], banking-level security-industry standards.

“STSAFE-A100 delivers an economical and certified solution for state-of-the-art security in IoT and brand protection, presenting an alternative with clear advantages over existing approaches like software-based security running on a general-purpose microcontroller or an uncertified crypto-companion IC,” said Laurent Degauque, Marketing Director, Secure Microcontroller Division, MDG Group, STMicroelectronics. “Seamless integration puts security at the heart of the product and frees developers to focus on maximizing added value at the application level.”

ST has made design-in of its new secure element easy for customers by providing a complete ecosystem that includes an expansion board with Arduino headers, a microcontroller library, and reference implementations. These simplify attaching the STSAFE-A100 to a microcontroller such as any from the STM32 family.

The STSAFE-A100 secure element is scheduled to enter volume production in July 2016, as a 4mm x 5mm SO8N or 2mm x 3mm UFDFPN8.