Security software centre stage at embedded world 2018

Security has become a major concern for the makers of embedded devices that work by isolating systems and offer only partial protection – mainly only against known attack vectors.

Vulnerabilities are rising dramatically as the attack surface widens and manufacturers struggle to protect sensitive data, intellectual property, and process integrity.

A successful attack on an embedded device or system can expose confidential information such as know-how, intellectual property, customer data, and process intelligence.

The Mirai botnet is just one example of how the Internet was taken by storm in late 2016, when it overwhelmed several high-profile targets with massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

With its DPI software R&S PACE 2, Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity provides an easy-to-integrate, scalable, and customisable turnkey OEM solution to meet embedded security challenges. The software classifies thousands of applications and protocols, provides content and metadata extraction, and delivers metrics and heuristics from IP traffic in real time.

When applied in a firewall, embedded developers can achieve reliable application visibility that allows for controlling of network traffic and for facilitating the secure delivery of critical applications and services.

"To build secure and reliable embedded devices, software vendors need to utilise real-time traffic analytics capabilities in their products that accelerate their ability to stay ahead of the evolving threats in the embedded technologies landscape," says Alexander Müller, product manager for DPI at Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity.

R&S PACE 2 operates in real time, provides weekly application and protocol signature updates and is optimised for fast processing, efficient memory utilisation, and classification accuracy.