March 15, 2017 — The CEC1702 hardware cryptography-enabled microcontroller is now available from Microchip Technology, a provider of microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP solutions. The CEC1702 is designed to address the increasing need for security measures, such as secure boot, driven by the continual growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
The CEC1702 is an ARM Cortex-M4-based microcontroller with a complete hardware cryptography-enabled solution in a single package. This programmable 32-bit microcontroller offers encryption, authentication, private and public key capabilities and allows customer programming flexibility to minimize customer risk. The device’s hardware cryptographic cipher suite reduces compute time by orders of magnitude over software solutions, and, as an example, provides 20-50x performance improvement for PKE acceleration as well as 100x improvement for encryption/decryption.
Protecting system integrity has never been more important. Whether it’s being used as a security coprocessor or a standalone microcontroller, the CEC1702 delivers defense against attacks, including:
- Pre-boot authentication of system firmware: Providing an immutable identity and a root of trust to ensure that the firmware is untouched and hasn’t been corrupted
- Firmware update authentication: Verifying that the firmware update has not been corrupted and is from a trusted source
- Authentication of system critical commands: Attesting that any system-critical command is from a known source with authorization to make the given change, preventing potentially devastating actions
- Protection of secrets with encryption: Safeguarding code and data to prevent theft or malicious activities
