Linux software offers security boost for IoT

Additionally, Wind River has released the latest version of Carrier Grade Profile for Wind River Linux, a turnkey platform for customers to meet Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) requirements.

Security Profile is a high value add-on software profile for Wind River Linux that delivers new security capabilities to help developers combat against future threats arising from the growth of IoT. Key features—including a hardened kernel, secure boot, a security-focused user space, and the Yocto Project Compatible Wind River Linux base—seamlessly integrate with validation tools, documentation, and hardware support.

"With the Internet of Things, the needs around device connectivity and security are growing more complex, yet companies are under pressure to keep to tighter development schedules and budgets,” said Dinyar Dastoor, vice president of product management at Wind River. “Our new Security Profile for Wind River Linux provides a secure and reliable industry standard computing platform that allows customers to shorten development lifecycles and get to market faster with the security, performance, and user experience required for today’s increasingly intelligent and connected devices across a range of industries.”

"With rising movements like the Internet of Things, developers are facing new complexities as they work on projects that demand higher levels of security, intelligence, and performance,” said Mike Woster, chief operating officer at The Linux Foundation. "Wind River has long been an open source champion and continues to pave the way for developers to take advantage of the latest Linux innovations and overcome new hurdles.”

Using Security Profile, customers can leverage the breadth and depth of multi-industry security best practices incorporated into the Common Criteria protection profile. In addition, where Common Criteria evaluation is necessary, Security Profile reduces the cost and schedule of developing, certifying, and maintaining a full-featured Linux distribution in the Common Criteria evaluation scheme. Security Profile includes certification evidence for the functional and assurance requirements to become certifiable. By demonstrating that their products work on a certifiable platform from Wind River, developers can work through the traditionally complicated and expensive certification process much faster. With help from Wind River, customers can achieve faster time to market and meet the security needs of a diverse range of industries such as aerospace and defense, automotive, industrial and networking.

Wind River commercial support, including flaw remediation evaluated to Common Criteria EAL 4+, extends across the Wind River Linux product portfolio, including the new Security Profile. This provides customers with extremely responsive issue resolution, which is especially key as security issues are often well underway before a public announcement is released.

Separately, the updated release of Carrier Grade Profile includes support for the latest Linux kernel 3.10 LTSI release and expanded silicon support for a variety of hardware architectures. The profile also includes virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) with containers to seamlessly provide carrier grade functionality in a virtualized environment. As data traffic pushes the limits of the carrier network, and the industry is evolving towards network functions virtualization (NFV), it is critical to uphold carrier grade reliability and maintain the strict service level agreement (SLA) performance and security requirements that carriers already guarantee their customers today.