Microchip Technology Inc., a leading provider of microcontroller, mixed-signals, analog, and Flash-IP solutions, has introduced a hardware cryptography-enabled microcontroller. The CEC1702 caters to the rising demand for security measures including secure boot, driven by the continual growth of IoT applications. 

 

Discussing the details, the CEC1702 is a full-featured ARM® Cortex®- M4-based microcontroller carrying a hardware cryptography-enabled solution in a single package. This programmable 32-bit microcontroller is low-power yet powerful and minimizes customer risk by allowing customer programming flexibility. It offers easy-to-use encryption, authentication, private and public key capabilities. 

 

 

Moving on to the performance, the microcontroller renders significant improvements as compared to the firmware-based solutions. The hardware cryptographic cipher suite of the device brings down the compute time by orders of magnitude over software solutions. For example, it delivers 20-50x performance improvement for PKE acceleration as well as 100x improvement for encryption/decryption. Owing to this robust hardware-based feature set, the applications run security measures quickly and efficiently with lowers costs and power consumption.

 

“The acceleration of the Internet of Things has brought higher visibility to the security considerations of new designs,” said, Ian Harris, vice president of Microchip’s computing products group. “One of the hardest challenges to solve in a connected system is the ability to ensure that the boot code has not been compromised. The CEC1702 eliminates this issue by making it easy for designers to verify pre-boot authentication and then provide firmware updated from known, trusted resources.”

 

Whether used as a security coprocessor or a standalone device, the CEC1702 protects system integrity like never before. It delivers a multi-dimensional defense against attacks, in the following ways:

 

• offers an immutable identity to ensure that the firmware hasn’t been corrupted. 

 

• prevents theft and malicious activities by safeguarding the code. 

 

• verifies that the firmware update is from a trusted source and is not corrupted.

 

• attests that any system-critical command has the authorization to make the given changes, thereby providing protection against potentially devastating actions. 

 

 

The CEC1702Q-B1- SX can be availed at USD 2.60 per device in 10k unit quantities.