Omar Fakhri, Head of Sales MEA, AMD, shares his views why we have to be vigilant in an age where The Internet of Things is becoming more dominant in people’s lives.
“A guy scans people around him with his smartphone. He gets their names, ages, recent personal changes and their income information, and can even transfer cash from their bank accounts. With his smartphone, he can control traffic lights and other various devices near him, and using these devices, he easily evades the police.”
Image Credit : Tweaktown
This is a scene from a recently released game where the antihero is a hacker. More than just a scene from a game, this may be a preview of a not so far-fetched dystopia where every security system becomes increasingly vulnerable in the Internet of Things era.
We all know that security issues aren’t news in the history of PC development. Since the 1980s when personal computers rapidly became ubiquitous, and the introduction of the World Wide Web, we have been facing threats from various forms of malware. From relatively low concern adware to blend threats that combine various malwares into a single threat. Therefore, it isn’t difficult to imagine in the near future of our ‘connected’ world, much more complex types of hacking and system attacks where the attacks evolve at speeds significantly greater than the software used to fight them.
An ‘Internet of Things’ improperly implemented could be weak to external attacks, as the scope of the network will be more than just a simple connection of devices. This scope could be gigantic, on the scale of neurons connected to each other in our body with the most complicated communication between cognition and response interconnection representing the network infrastructure and the sensory neurons representing IoT enabled devices. Our personal data and intellectual properties may be susceptible to weak points that we are yet to realize in the network structure, and systems that surround our everyday lives can be the targets of attacks.
What I, as a person who is deeply involved in technology and the hardware industry, can’t emphasize enough is that we need to be prepared for security from the base. To realize the Internet of Things environment, processors and sensors must be embedded in every device that we use. This dramatic growth in the number of network access points will make it increasingly difficult to manage security through software alone.
A simple scenario could be: a system managing a Smart Home will recognize you waking up in the morning by a sensor, and will prepare your coffee and bread according to your preference. Also, it adjusts the environment by recognizing your body temperature. The system will alert you of the day’s schedule connecting with your smartphone and on your smart TV where it overlays on your preferred channel on the screen. Through accessing the data being transmitted between simple home devices, a hacker could analyze your personal data including your preferences, body temperature and daily schedule. What if that information contained business confidential information, or financial transaction data?
The discontinuation of security patch support for legacy OSes has caused great concern around various sectors of IT based on these OSes. And this concern is just the tip of the iceberg when compared to possible future security issues. Network connected devices with sensors and processors will increase significantly in the coming years, and this will facilitate the need for hardware developers and engineers to look at security in a very different way; to develop an integrated security solution for our day-to-day devices.
As a leader in innovative system semiconductors including semi-custom solutions, AMD acutely understands the importance of security in the Internet of Things era, and we are already responsibly addressing these needs. There are two major camps for hardware-based security: proprietary or closed architecture, and architecture based on industry standards.
AMD is a long-time supporter of industry standards and thus has opted for the latter, joining an expansive security ecosystem: that based on ARM TrustZone technology. Over the next year, AMD plans to roll out an AMD-wide product stack for client, server, graphics, embedded and semi-custom businesses based on what we call the AMD Secure Processor. Under the umbrella of AMD Secure Technology, the AMD Secure Processor joins other AMD IP innovations from the No Execute Bit to the Secure Asset Management Unit as the future of AMD’s security strategy.
Security is no longer a task that can lean most heavily on the software industry. It’s our vision that through a hardware-based security strategy built on the industry–standard approach of ARM TrustZone technology, AMD will enable enhanced security options for our customers and technology partners and help ensure our increasingly digital lives are also increasingly less vulnerable.
