The following are news announcements made during the past week:
PRESS RELEASE:
Presto Engineering Announces Secure Manufacture and Test Service for IoT Chip Security
The recent Meltdown and Spectre problems have highlighted the vulnerability of computer chips to hacking that can, at least, be addressed through software patches. However, another area that is increasingly a target for hackers is IoT where each node in an IoT network can provide an entry point to a company’s corporate systems, in a similar manner to the way that home security cameras, robot vacuum cleaners, etc. have been hacked. Presto Engineering is offering a comprehensive manufacturing and test service that is tailored to ensure IoT chips are made to high standards of security.
“According to analysts, there are already billions of IoT chips in use,” said Martin Kingdon, Presto’s VP of Sales. “This figure is predicted to grow exponentially, driven by the ability of IoT to monitor and provide hard data on which actions can be taken, such as scheduling pre-emptive maintenance before a failure can happen. But the rush to design and make IoT chips has often meant that security has been overlooked, or not included, in the drive to a lower price. This is false economy as these chips can be vulnerable to hacking giving access to confidential data streams.”
IoT devices’ connection to the Internet provides a potentially vulnerable route for hackers. The chip should have two levels of security built into the design of the ASIC itself to stop unauthorised access. The first is Cryptography to protect communication and maintain the confidentiality and integrity of data as it moves across the network. The second is Authentication to verify that only authorised computers or people have access.
Turning the design into a chip requires a highly secure manufacturing supply chain. Presto can manage the entire chip manufacturing and testing process to make chips with levels of security right up to that needed for banking standards, including the secure provisioning of the cryptographic keys. The latter ensures that processors will only execute code and updates identified with the correct secret keys. Handling these securely in the manufacturing supply chain is vital to an effective security strategy and is covered by the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation standards. These range from the basic Evaluation Assurance Level 1 to Level 7 for government and military, with Level 5 being typical for banks, payment systems, and other highly demanding commercial application.
Presto already has considerable experience in mass-producing highly secure chips that are used in chip-and-pin banking cards. Its state of the art facility at Meyreuil, France, near Aix-en-Provence, and its facilities in Asia produce over 70 million chips a year. As an experienced, certified provider of secure chips, Presto is able to provide cost effective solutions from small volumes in Europe to very large production runs in its own secure facilities in Taiwan and Thailand. This combines with Presto’s IoT device expertise in mixed signal, package design, low power techniques, test and qualification to ensure right-first-time chips that reduce time to market, costs and risks.
Presto Engineering will be discussing this and its many other manufacturing and testing services on stand 603 in Hall 3A at the Embedded World show in Nuremberg, Germany from February 27 to March 1, 2018. More information about Presto Engineering’s IoT secure provisioning can be found in its white paper “Secure Provisioning – A ‘Must Have’ for IoT Security” can be found at https://presto-eng.com/News/Whitepapers.html
PRESS RELEASE:
Inmarsat says IoT will play major role in protecting agricultural workers
The farm of the future will leverage Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to create safer working environments and drive down risks to the workforce. This is according to an independent study commissioned by global mobile satellite company Inmarsat (LSE:ISAT.L), which found that half of agritech companies will strengthen the sector’s health and safety practices through IoT adoption.
Market research specialist Vanson Bourne interviewed 100 agritech companies from across the world as part of Inmarsat’s The Future of IoT in Enterprise study. It found that 49 per cent of agritech companies rate improving health and safety as one of their primary motivations for developing IoT solutions, ahead of monitoring environmental changes (48 per cent), and identifying efficiency gains and cost saving opportunities (45 per cent). In a similar vein, 40 per cent expect IoT to bring significant improvements to health and safety practices in the near future.
Commenting on the findings, Chris Harry-Thomas, Director of Agritech Strategy at Inmarsat Enterprise said: “Despite industry efforts to improve health and safety in agriculture, research from the International Labour Organisation reveals that the rate of fatal accidents has remained high, and that it continues to be the world’s most dangerous industry. It estimates that 170,000 agricultural workers are killed each year, and that millions more suffer injuries from accidents with agricultural machinery or negative long-term health effects from exposure to agrochemicals and pesticides.
“With the Fourth Agricultural Revolution under way, IoT can present agritech businesses with a wealth of solutions to these challenges. Automated systems, enabled by IoT, can reduce risk by removing workers from the most dangerous procedures, such as lifting heavy materials or operating dangerous machinery. Automated machinery can also typically respond quicker to emergencies, monitoring and stopping equipment before there is a threat to worker safety. The industry is also leveraging the Internet of Things through the form of wearable technologies. These devices, integrated into watches, helmets and clothing, can detect falls and monitor staff health through heart rate and temperature, enabling agricultural businesses to react more quickly to emergencies and bring rapid response medical attention to injured staff.”
Harry-Thomas added: “As agriculture expands into new and more remote land, terrestrial connectivity becomes increasingly limited. Workers are also exposed to greater risk, as they are more isolated and further away from emergency services. Satellite communication therefore has an integral role to play as it enables cutting edge technologies to be accessed in the most remote areas of the planet, equipping farms with networks of automated devices and sensors to protect workers.”
“We are passionate about driving the momentum behind the Internet of Things and creating safer and more productive working environments across the world. It’s encouraging to see that the sector is taking steps to develop and deploy these technologies and safeguard the health, safety and welfare of their staff.”
Satellite communication networks offer superior coverage and reliability, crucial in the event of extreme weather or an emergency, or extending connectivity to remote locations. With up to 99.9% uptime, Inmarsat’s L-band services are enabling IoT solutions to change the face of agriculture. To view the research microsite and download the full report – ‘The Future of IoT in Enterprise – 2017’ – visit: http://research.inmarsat.com/.
PRESS RELEASE:
NextFlex Intros Flexible Arduino System for IoT and Sensor Products
NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) Manufacturing Institute, has announced it has successfully proven the robustness of the FHE manufacturing process, producing multiple functional samples of a flexible Arduino system. As part of the Flexible Arduino Microcontroller Project, NextFlex redesigned a device typically built on a rigid printed circuit board (PCB)-by printing and attaching thin bare die on a flexible substrate while maintaining the performance associated with traditional packaged ICs . This achievement ultimately helps realize FHE’s enormous potential for creating ubiquitous IoT and sensor products for consumer, commercial and military applications.
Arduino is an open-source, microcontroller-based electronics prototyping platform that utilizes versatile, easy-to-use hardware and software. As a result, Arduino has achieved a high degree of popularity with developers ranging from novices to seasoned experts because it is open source, with publicly available design files and bills of materials (BOMs), and low cost. Up until now, however, Arduino products have been built with traditional packaged die microcontrollers, which deliver high performance and functionality, but have design limitations (fragile, rigid, bulky), therefore complicating integration into newer sensor devices that may be flexible or curved in design.
NextFlex tackled this design challenge head on by developing a process flow for manufacturing a flexible Arduino that reduced the number of process steps by almost two thirds when compared with traditional electronics manufacturing processes. NextFlex replaced the traditional circuit board with a thin, flexible plastic sheet and used digital printing processes for circuit elements. Die attach of a thin bare die eliminated traditional microcontroller packaging while further enabling flexibility of the product. The new process translates to an anticipated savings in manufacturing time and cost, as well as a significant reduction in the end-product weight – the flexible Arduino is only a third of the weight of the rigid Arduino Mini board.
The NextFlex Arduino project’s sponsor is the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL); see announcement here. “The possibilities for FHE technology are virtually limitless,” said Dr. Benjamin Leever, the AFRL Advanced Development Team leader and NextFlex Government Chief Technology Officer. “Proving the manufacturability of this technology through an open-source platform will expand FHE’s reach even further by providing everyone from industrial product developers to high school students with the opportunity to innovate on new electronics concepts.” He added, “We are pleased to have teamed with NextFlex on this project and look forward to the next steps in the optimization process. This is truly a momentous achievement for the FHE community.”
This announcement further underscores NextFlex’s mission to facilitate innovation through collaboration and promote sustainable manufacturing ecosystems. Noted NextFlex Director of Technology Jason Marsh, “Today’s breakthrough would not have been made possible without the tireless efforts, passion and teamwork among the NextFlex and AFRL teams. Being able to demonstrate the process manufacturability of a low-cost, easy-to-deploy and truly flexible platform gives everyone-and by that, I mean EVERYONE that feeds into the Arduino open source developer community-the ability to create and speed to market innovative new products that harness the power of FHE.”
NextFlex’s San Jose-based open-innovation Technology Hub proved valuable in allowing NextFlex to integrate all the component steps to yield functioning samples. The Hub is the only single-source FHE processing production line in the U.S., and offers members access to state-of-the-art production equipment for proving new technology, developing new manufacturing processes, and testing new materials. NextFlex first demonstrated a sample flexible Arduino system last September during its annual Innovation Day, where Wilfried Bair, senior engineering manager for device integration and packaging at NextFlex, talked about the creation of the flexible Arduino.
PRESS RELEASE:
Ayyeka Announces Wavelet Remote Monitoring Device for IIoT
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) remote monitoring company Ayyeka has announced the launch of the next generation of its Wavelet wireless telemetry device.
The Wavelet is an IIoT edge device that autonomously operates industrial sensors, allowing operators to collect real-time information about the condition of dispersed assets including water, wastewater, oil and gas, and environmental infrastructure.
The device adds full 4G (LTE) connectivity and dual SIM card support to the long list of technologies that it supports which includes all other GSM-based networks as well as Sigfox and LoRa. It will allow operators to generate sensor data from “virtually anywhere on the planet serviced by a cellular or LPWAN communications network,” according to Ayyeka CEO Ariel Stern.
Further additions included in the new release include an advanced LED-based Visual Device Status Indication System (VDSIS) that will provide field crews with detailed diagnostic information about the device’s operating state. The upgraded Wavelet also features a cutting-edge battery reporting mechanism which delivers accurate lifetime predictions to users monitoring Wavelet fleets. The feature compares favorably with those encountered in consumer devices. Automatic external/internal antenna switching has also been added to guarantee that the devices maintain the strongest possible reception at all times.
Some of Wavelet’s applications include H2S monitoring for wastewater collection networks, obtaining pressure and chlorine readings in drinking water networks, and sampling air quality in localities close to mining operations.
According to Ayyeka Senior Product Manager Tal Avrahami, whose team led the development efforts: “the similarities between this Wavelet and anything we’ve produced previously start and stop at the device enclosure.” Avrahami described the latest device as “an entirely different beast on the inside.”
PRESS RELEASE:
Virginia City Offers Readiness Workshop for Smart-City Initiatives
The City of Newport News, Virginia recently hosted a Smart Cities Readiness Workshop to create a strategy to develop smart infrastructure to benefit the region. The workshop was delivered by the Smart Cities Council as part of its Readiness Program, which helps communities craft action plans to further innovation, inclusion and investment.
“This workshop is about sharing ideas, concepts and solutions to take this region to new heights and I am excited about the possibilities,” said Newport News Mayor McKinley Price. “It will also help to solidify the Hampton Roads region as a hub for technology and innovation.”
More than 125 people participated in the workshop, including former Virginia State Secretary of Technology Karen Jackson, Newport News Mayor McKinley Price and Director of IT Andy Stein, as well as city officials, city and county department heads, technology innovators, local business leaders, university representatives and community stakeholders.
Several key areas were explored, including open data, public/private partnerships, smart utilities, emergency management, transportation and public safety.
In particular, workshop participants explored initiatives such as converting all of its street lights to energy-efficient LEDs to have better access to usage trends as a tool to promote conservation; improving public safety by aggregating video from various sources and providing it to first responders as they arrive on the scene as well as using GIS tools to provide indoor maps of buildings to help guide responders to incidents faster; and enabling access to open data to help citizens make better choices and providing free Wi-Fi to those who do not have access at home.
“The Readiness Program is all about helping cities craft a vision and action plan to deliver results for the entire community,” said Smart Cities Council Managing Director Philip Bane. “The Council will continue to work with Newport News to build upon this foundation to help the city become more livable, workable and sustainable.”
Gannett Fleming and Sensus, a Xylem brand, both sponsored the workshop. Each company has partnered with the Smart Cities Council to help communities make informed decisions when implementing smart technologies.
“Gannett Fleming has a more than 100-year-long track record of using our engineering and infrastructure expertise to improve the quality of life in the communities we serve,” said Jessica Hou, PE, BCEE, ENV SP, vice president of Gannett Fleming. “We look forward to partnering with Newport News – whose commitment was evident by the robust participation in this workshop – to address the unique challenges and opportunities that come with building a smart city.”
“At Sensus, our customers are on the front line of building smart cities,” said Vice President of Communications Solutions Marketing Randolph Wheatley of Sensus. “More than 2,000 communities have connected over 37 million smart devices for water, gas, electricity and lighting applications with the Sensus FlexNet communication network.”
The City of Newport News was a finalist for Smart Cities Council’s 2017 Readiness Challenge Grants, which helped the winning cities of Austin, Indianapolis, Miami, Orlando and Philadelphia advance key initiatives such as improving transportation, developing smart growth plans and reducing racial inequality.
PRESS RELEASE:
Virtuosys Launches Edge Application Platform for Internet of Things
Virtuosys, the company delivering business-ready solutions at the network edge, has unveiled its Edge Application Platform which dramatically changes the economics and efficiency of delivering mobile/multi-access edge computing (MEC). Requiring no support or involvement from a mobile operator, the end-to-end hardware and software solution can be rapidly installed, delivering a low-latency, self-healing Mesh network that can securely run multiple applications simultaneously. This brings innovative and exciting applications to a range of markets including Smart Transport, Connected Retail, Financial Services and other sectors including industrial Internet of Things (IoT). The company will be demonstrating a range of vertical market applications running on the platform at Mobile World Congress 2018, in Hall 8.0 booth F31.
The wireless industry is increasingly accepting the limitations of the current model for cloud services, and turning its attention instead to the benefits offered by shifting processing and storage to the network edge – providing the ability to operate stand-alone networks when connections to the internet cannot be guaranteed or high performance and low latency is essential. At the same time, edge devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated with the rise of the IoT, leading to the generation of huge amounts of real-world data. This requires cost effective edge processing to avoid consuming increasing amounts of bandwidth that will ultimately overload networks. Furthermore, cloud services are poorly suited to distributed environments like those seen in smart transit or vehicles.
In addition to a local edge Mesh network which continues operating even when not connected to the internet, Virtuosys’ Edge Application platform offers a transport agnostic network that works over any wireless or wired protocol. The platform allows management of services at the edge with a white label app store, whilst an open development architecture allows developers to deploy apps specific to their own needs in the cloud, at the edge, or a combination of both. The distributed compute platform, meanwhile, increases the coverage and compute power each time an Edge Server is added to the Mesh.
“The promise of edge computing in the wireless industry has been well documented, and in particular how it will play a key role in enabling a wide range of innovative IoT services. However, to date, actual deployments have been few and far between,” said Alan Jones, CEO of Virtuosys. “Virtuosys technology provides these benefits today, and can be rapidly developed and deployed taking Edge Computing to the end point, not just the base station. We are excited to be launching the platform today and will be demonstrating a selection of industry vertical applications at MWC in Barcelona.”
The Platform can be deployed in any environment – from industrial Internet of Things, to Smart Cities, to retail. It also delivers a wide range of application services, from payment processing, to employee messaging. In every situation, the Virtuosys Platform can give customers a competitive edge in things that matter: performance, security, resilience and cost.
PRESS RELEASE:
Cloud Security Alliance Releases Report Examining Blockchain Technology for IoT Security
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, today released “Using Blockchain Technology to Secure Internet of Things“, a new white paper which explores the capabilities of blockchain technology in facilitating and improving the security of the internet of things (IoT).
Authored by the CSA’s Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology Working Groups, the paper highlights various features that should be considered when securing connected devices using blockchain technology. The document provides a high-level overview of blockchain technology, and then outlines a set of architectural patterns that enable blockchain to be used as a technology to secure IoT capabilities. It also offers specific use-case examples of blockchain for IoT security.
“Organizations on the forefront of implementing IoT are understandably encountering challenges in identifying appropriate security technologies that are capable of mitigating the unique threats that IoT presents,” said Brian Russell, chair of the CSA IoT Working Group. “We hope this document will inspire business leaders and developers embracing the blockchain opportunity to extend the capabilities of this technology to secure the internet of things.”
The report addresses two technologies with different maturity levels:
Blockchain: A technology enabler that supports rapidly evolving cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash and hundreds more. Blockchain’s success as a foundation for cryptocurrencies has spawned new research aimed at securing systems and technologies using the distributed ledger. Most initiatives in the business context are limited to prototypes that serve mostly to master the intricacies of this complex technology. Current applications only scrape the surface of their possible uses.
Internet of Things: A fast-maturing set of technologies that support the transformation of business and mission processes. The IoT is the inter-networking of physical devices such as connected vehicles, smart buildings, industrial control systems, drone and robotics systems and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity that enable these objects to exchange data. The IoT has reached varying levels of maturity across sectors such as consumer, transportation, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and financial.
“The IoT is having a major impact on how many companies conduct business and people go about their daily lives. However, security has become a stumbling block to widespread adoption or implementation. Luckily, blockchain holds great promise for securing connected devices and systems,” said Sabri Khemissa, co-chair for the Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology Working Group and the lead author of the paper. “This research should serve as a roadmap to implementing technology that will push the dial forward in securing IoT.”
The CSA IoT Working Group focuses on understanding the relevant use cases for IoT deployments and defining actionable guidance for security practitioners to secure their implementations. The Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology Working Group works to produce useful content to educate different industries on blockchain and its proper use, as well as define blockchain security and compliance requirements based upon different industries and use cases.
Individuals interested in becoming involved in the future research and initiatives of either group are invited to do so by visiting the Internet of Things WG join page and the Blockchain/Distributed Ledger WG join page. The Using Blockchain Technology to Secure Internet of Things white paper is a free resource from the CSA and is available at https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/download/using-blockchain-technology-to-secure-the-internet-of-things.
PRESS RELEASE:
Stratus Launches Virtualized Industrial Platform
Stratus Technologies, a global leader in continuous availability solutions for mission-critical applications, today unveiled the new Stratus ztC Edge at the ARC Industry Forum, taking place Feb. 12-15 in Orlando, Florida. The first product of Stratus’ recently announced edge vision and direction, ztC Edge is a zero-touch, fully virtualized and self-protecting computing platform, specifically designed for industrial edge environments. With built-in remote management and user-installable in less than an hour, ztC Edge significantly reduces the IT burden for virtualized computing at the edge. Its self-protecting and self-monitoring features help reduce unplanned downtime and ensure availability of business-critical industrial applications.
The influx of data from connected devices is driving the need for – and growth of – new edge computing infrastructure. According to research from IDC, revenue of edge computing infrastructure will reach $3.4bn in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 22 percent, with Internet of Things (IoT) and IT/OT convergence driving most of this opportunity.
With this growth comes the need for easier ways to ensure the availability of applications that run critical operations at the edge and collect and process this data. In fact, in a recent market report by ARC Advisory Group, more than 90 percent of those surveyed indicated that as edge computing grows, organizations will need a simplified edge infrastructure that can be remotely managed. ztC Edge, with its built-in virtualization, self-protecting capabilities, and managed services, provides a versatile industrial platform for running business-critical industrial applications quickly and reliably outside of the data center in environments such as the manufacturing plant floor.
Key features of Stratus ztC Edge include built-in virtualization for up to three virtual machines (VMs), each running different industrial control or IoT applications; automated application and data recovery; automated site recovery; rugged, hot-swappable nodes that can be wall- or DIN rail-mounted; and cloud-based health monitoring and built-in remote management services.
Stratus ztC Edge comes equipped with an installation wizard and management utility that makes it easy for operational technology (OT) staff to set up, configure and manage their virtual machines, thus requiring little or no resources from corporate IT. Furthermore, ztC Edge’s virtualization host software can be updated dynamically, while the system is running, without requiring a system reboot.
Stratus ztC Edge is comprised of redundant nodes that act as a single system. With live migration of VMs, data replication, and redundant networking, it instantly provides protection for applications and data. The system continually monitors itself, evaluating its health and performance. If ztC Edge detects a potential central processing unit (CPU) or memory failure in one node, it proactively moves VMs from one node to the other ensuring application continuity.
Stratus also offers cloud-based system health monitoring and management services, which ensure that applications on a customer’s ztC Edge systems are always running, with minimal customer effort. ztC Edge can be configured to continually monitor and send system-generated logs to Stratus over a secure network. Stratus will analyze logs, triage alerts, and predict failures to address potential issues before they occur. Depending on the service level chosen by the customer, Stratus will initiate corrective action (including the shipment of a spare part), conduct a thorough root cause analysis, or prepare a failure prevention plan.
Stratus ztC Edge is the first product of Stratus’ recently announced edge vision and direction. Future products in the ztC Edge family will include additional services, such as security, and full-stack monitoring and protection. ztC Edge will be generally available within the next 90 days. Business partners and customers will be able to place orders in March 2018.