VOOX: A Hardware Shield For Embedded Systems

In today’s interconnected world, embedded systems are both ubiquitous and increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. In fact, cybersecurity is often not just a matter of protecting sensitive data and installations, but a legal requirement. VOOX’s technologies revolutionize the way we protect systems while improving determinism and overall performance. Let’s see how they work.

Embedded systems are vulnerable to attacks that can compromise both the system itself and its data. When compromised, these devices can be used as maicious gateways to launch further attacks on the entire network. Typical consequences lead to data breaches, operational disruptions, financial losses, and reputational damage.

Best Security Practices: We All Know Them

To mitigate these risks, various security practices have been established. These are not in the scope of this article, but we can list:

Hardware Root of Trust: Establishing a secure foundation for the device’s operations.
Software Package Signing: Verifying the integrity and authenticity of software components.
Ciphered Communication: Encrypting data to protect it from unauthorized access.
Network Firewalling: Disabling unnecessary network ports to reduce attack surfaces.
Principle of Least Privilege: Strictly limit the access to the resources required to complete the system’s mission, and not more. E.g., no root user allowed.

These security solutions, while valuable, are still vulnerable to bugs, outdated packages, and vulnerabilities in custom code. This consideration has lead to the notion of layered security.

Layered Security: A Multifaceted Approach

Effective cybersecurity often involves a layered approach, combining multiple security measures to create a series of independent defense lines. In a layered approach, each component is responsible for protecting itself and the sub-components it contains.

In cutting-edge embedded systems, virtualization acts as the outermost security barrier, isolating the business application from the cybersecurity front-end within separate virtual machines possibly running on different CPU cores. Hardware virtualization, when supported, provides a strong foundation for this isolation. A hypervisor oversees the operation of these virtual machines.

Introducing VOOX: A Hardware Security Shield For Embedded Systems

Did you notice the pattern? Conventional security solutions rely heavily on software protecting software. Hardware is a missing layer in the protective shield. This is where VOOX comes in.

The technology developed by VOOX builds a hardware fortress that intercepts and scrutinizes all data flows to and from the embedded device. Any malformed, suspicious or otherwise unwanted piece of data is removed before it even reaches the application core.

How Does It Work?

The VOOX shield offers flexible integration options. It can be added as a daughter card for a modular approach or directly integrated into an FPGA on the system’s main board. All the system’s I/Os that may serve as attack vectors are routed through the shield. Incorporating the VOOX shield into the rest of the hardware offers several advantages:

Real-time Protection: the shield’s backend logic can inspect data at high speeds, providing immediate protection against threats.
Tamper Resistance: The hardware implementation makes it difficult for attackers to bypass or modify VOOX’s security measures.
Transparency to Applications: The VOOX shield operates without requiring changes to the application code, ensuring compatibility and ease of deployment.

Benefits Brought By VOOX

The technology developed by VOOX brings enhanced perimeter security at the hardware level along with other benefits:

Improved Performance: By offloading security tasks to hardware, VOOX can reduce the computational burden on the application, improving determinism and overall system performance.
Reduced Attack Surface: VOOX’s ability to intercept and filter data can help minimize the potential attack surface, making it harder for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities.
Compliance: VOOX can help organizations comply with industry regulations and standards that require strong cybersecurity measures.
Flexibility: The VOOX shield’s backend logic understands a variety of industrial communication interfaces and underlying protocols including Ethernet, serial, CAN, Profibus and many more.

It’s worth noting that VOOX’s security features complement and enhance any existing business application safeguards, maintaining the layered defense paradigm.

What About the Cost?

Hardware features, especially those implemented in FPGAs have the reputation of being expensive. There’s probably a merit to this in some cases, but not always. While hardware-based security solutions can sometimes carry a higher cost, VOOX offers a strategic option that structures the costs differently and yields significant benefits.

Conventional Software-Based Security: The Hidden Costs

Conventional software-based security solutions often introduce hidden costs that can outweigh their perceived advantages. These costs include:

Performance Overhead: Software-based security measures impact system performance in terms of latency, determinism, and resource utilization.
Increased Hardware Requirements: To accommodate the computational demands of software-based security, systems may require additional CPU cores, memory, and storage.
Development Costs: Customizing the hypervisor and related security drivers adds significant upfront fees, development delays and costs. Open-source, readily available software is probably not an option here.

VOOX: A Cost-Effective Solution

In contrast, VOOX offers a more cost-effective approach by offloading security tasks to specialized hardware. This reduces the burden on the main processor and memory resources, allowing for:

Optimized System Design: Smaller, less powerful systems can be designed, reducing hardware costs.
Lower Power Consumption: Reduced computational demands lead to lower power consumption, resulting in energy savings.
Improved Efficiency: By focusing on core business functions, the system can operate more efficiently and effectively.

In conclusion, while there may be an initial investment associated with VOOX, the long-term benefits in terms of improved security, performance, and cost-effectiveness make it a strategic choice for organizations seeking to protect their embedded systems.

Want to Know More?

For a deeper dive into the technology developed by VOOX and its capabilities, please visit their website. You’ll find comprehensive information, technical insights, and resources to help you understand how VOOX can enhance the security and performance of your embedded systems.

Disclaimer

This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Neither Embedded Expertise nor the author is affiliated with VOOX. The information presented here is based on publicly available data and personal experience.