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65 Engineering a More Sustainable Future | ADI Figure 4: The IEC 62443 levels of security. 4 in many cases. This is where industrial component designers will benefit from turnkey security ICs, embedding essential mechanisms such as: X Secure key storage X Side-channel attacks protection X Commands taking care of functions such as • Message encryption • Digital signature computation • Digital signature verification These turnkey security ICs relieve IACS component developers from investing resources into complex security primitive design. Another benefit of using security ICs is to inherently take advantage of the natural isolation between general-purpose functions and dedicated security functions. The strength of security functions is more easily evaluated when security is concentrated in an element rather than spread throughout the system. Also gained from this isolation is the preservation of the verification of the security function across software and/ or hardware modifications of the component. Upgrades can be performed without the need to reassess the complete security function. Furthermore, secure ICs vendors can implement extremely strong protection techniques that are not accessible at the PCB or system level. This is the case of hardened EEPROM or Flash memory or physical unclonable function (PUF) that can achieve the highest level of resistance against the most sophisticated attacks. Overall, security ICs are a great foundation to build system security. Securing at the Edge Industry 4.0 means sensing everywhere, any time, and thus calls for the deployment of more edge devices. IACS edge devices include sensors, actuators, robot arms, PLCs with their I/O modules, etc. Each edge device is connected to a highly networked infrastructure and becomes a potential entry point for hackers. Not only does the attack surface expand proportionally with the number of devices, but the diverse composition of devices inherently expands the variety of attack vectors. "Given existing platforms, there's a lot of viable attack vectors and increased exposure of both the endpoint and the edge devices," said Yaniv Karta, CTO of the app security and penetration-testing vendor, SEWORKS. As an example, in a complex IACS, not all sensors come from the same vendor, nor do they share the same architecture in terms of microcontrollers, operating systems, or communication stacks. Each architecture potentially carries its own weaknesses. As a result, the IACS accumulates and is exposed to all their vulnerabilities, as illustrated by the MITRE ATT&CK database6 or the ICS-CERT advisories. 7 Moreover, with the Industrial Internet of Things IoT (IIoT) trend of embedding more intelligence at the edge, 8 devices are being developed to make autonomous system decisions. Therefore, it is even more critical to ensure that device hardware and software can be trusted given these decisions are critical to safety, operation of the system, and more. Additionally, protecting the Adobe Stock / Chungking – stock.adobe.com Adobe Stock / Yingyaipumi – stock.adobe.com