Accelerated Hardware and the Programmable HSM
Now more than ever, electronic devices that are critical to our everyday life, from complex IoT infrastructures to national defense systems, are becoming more and more ubiquitous. Yet one huge problem remains for those attempting to safeguard the Internet’s newfound interconnectivity: the amount of computing power required. Many security experts have been questioning whether this new demand for computing power with built-in cyber protections will be delivered using software or purpose-built hardware.
Cyber Resilience Begins on a Hardware Level
The ugly truth is, any asset without proper KMS security built into either is at risk for a cyberattack. A safety-critical system cannot be considered truly safe without adequate cyber-protections. While producers of connected cyber-physical systems are moving quickly to build robust protections into their products, many experts agree that the impact of a potential large-scale hardware attack could have devastating consequences on both customers, companies and the general public. While software can easily be replaced, updated or downloaded, hardware can’t usually be altered after it leaves the factory which produced it. From the moment malicious hardware is built into a device, an attack can be executed in a wide variety of ways.
For example, an attack can be internally triggered based on a calendar date or externally triggered using stored hidden malware. These are just a few examples of many underlining the need to proactively address hardware security concerns before it’s too late. That’s why global security experts worldwide are in agreement: cyber-resilience begins with hyper-secure, high-performance hardware - or accelerated hardware.
Cybersecurity Using Accelerated Hardware
Accelerated hardware is hardware specifically designed to perform certain functions more efficiently than would be possible using software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Using accelerated hardware, an operation can be computed faster than software running on a general CPU. Conducting tasks using specially-designed hardware can decrease latency, increase throughput, and increase parallelism. On a software-level, it can also lead to faster development, lower non-recurring engineering costs, and heightened portability.
