LynuxWorks Protects Embedded Connected Devices With LynxOS 7.0

Due to the ubiquity of the Internet, a network infrastructure is now in place for the “Internet of Things” - a new world of tens of billions of connected devices. The majority of those devices are expected to be hubs and sensor nodes, collecting data and transmitting it from machine-to- machine. Application examples include aerospace and defence communication infrastructure, industrial automation, smart meters, fleet management, device monitoring, medical and patient monitoring, and situational awareness.

With cyber threats being more sophisticated, and more of the critical infrastructure being controlled by these embedded devices, security protection will be required on each device rather than just relying on the network protection that is in place today.

In an April 2013 VDC Views article titled Operating System Security is Critical to M2M Devices, Jared Weiner, senior analyst for VDC Research, stated “… [security] has become increasingly important as more devices are equipped with ‘smart’ functionality.” Weiner added, “Security is among the operating system selection criteria with the greatest momentum. As the challenges of addressing security risks evolve, it is increasingly important to guard against threats at the operating system level. Operating systems for next-generation connected devices must provide support for secure communication by enabling security technologies such as authentication and encryption. Through their domain expertise and industry partnerships, operating system vendors are well positioned to play the role of trusted advisors while OEMs work toward implementing a formal security initiative.”

“We believe that LynuxWorks is raising the bar for security in embedded devices. With the latest release of its LynxSecure hypervisor, and now with the security features built into the latest version of LynxOS, they are helping embedded developers build truly secure connected devices,” Weiner concluded.

LynxOS 7.0 provides the ability for developers to embed military-grade security directly into their devices by utilizing features such as access control lists, audit, quotas, local trusted path, account management, trusted menu manager and OpenPAM. It also contains networking support for long haul networks with TCP/IPV4, IPV6, 2G/3G/4G cellular and WiMax communication stacks. It also supports the short-haul networks common with M2M applications such as 802.11 WiFi, ZigBee wireless mesh and BlueTooth.

“LynxOS is already in millions of devices and this new functionality allows both existing and new customers to bring security to the forefront,” said Robert Day the VP of Sales and Marketing for LynuxWorks, Inc. “We expect all our embedded market segments, from military and aerospace to industrial, medical and office automation, to benefit from the security and networking improvements in this next generation of LynxOS.”

In many market segments, a more advanced communication mechanism will be required to offer extremely low latency, high throughput and high availability for application-to-application communications to help satisfy demanding real-time Quality of Service requirements. LynuxWorks partners with key middleware providers such as Real-Time Innovations to offer these advanced middleware products ported on the LynxOS operating system.

“We believe that the combination of LynxOS 7.0 with its advanced security features, and RTI Connext middleware based on the Data Distribution Service standard, offer a compelling solution for building real-time connected embedded devices,” said David Barnett, vice president, Products and Markets for RTI. “For our customers in aerospace and defense, industrial and medical markets, our joint solution meets their security, real-time, high throughput and high availability needs ─ all based on open standards.”

About LynxOS 7.0

LynxOS 7.0 is a deterministic, hard real-time operating system that provides POSIX conformant APIs in a small footprint embedded kernel. LynxOS provides symmetric multi-processing support to fully take advantage of multi-core/multi-threaded processors. LynxOS 7.0 includes new tool chains, debuggers and cross development host support. LynxOS 7.0 provides open APIs, including medium-assurance security per the general purpose operating-system protection profile.

LynxOS 7.0 supports the most popular reference targets in the Intel and PowerPC architectures including the new Intel 4th Generation Core and the Freescale QorIQ processors. LynxOS 7.0 Board Support Packages are available for targets from GE Intelligent Systems, Curtiss Wright, and Extreme Engineering.