At Arm DevSummit 2022, Arm and partners are excited to announce the release of the new PSA Certified Firmware Update API. This API addresses the long-standing challenges of keeping IoT devices secure and up-to-date throughout their entire life cycle. The API provides a standard way of supporting firmware updates, aligns with established industry standards, and is available to try today in your next IoT project. It also enjoys the backing of major players across the IoT space. Finally, it is the first outcome of an industry-wide initiative called Project Centauri. This initiative aims to make IoT development easier and faster.
Why Firmware Update is so important – and still so hard
Developers for IoT understand that security is paramount. According to the 2022 PSA Certified Security Report, 44% of IoT decision-makers surveyed cite over-the-air (OTA) updates as one of the top three factors in creating secure devices. However, it remains a significant challenge. Building secure applications on a microcontroller (MCU) that can be patched and kept up to date over the lifetime of a device is complex and fraught with pitfalls. Despite the need for specialist in-house expertise, applying new proven solutions, and lack of standards, it is still challenging to provide end users with the assurance that their devices are truly secure.
The lack of standardized solutions also means that many developers and OEMs end up duplicating effort on functionality that is critical to ensure devices work reliably and securely. This takes time and effort and brings avoidable costs. For this reason, some of the biggest device manufacturers have been talking to us about their need for a standard firmware update solution for MCU devices. For example, Flex and AAEON have expressed their support for the PSA Certified Firmware Update API.
Defining a standard for secure firmware updates
Earlier this year, we invited a group of specialists from 14 different organizations across the IoT space to join us in a technical working group. This group was set on defining an open, architecture-agnostic firmware update API, which has resulted in the release of the PSA Certified Firmware Update API. This API provides a standard interface for applying a new firmware image, and today we are releasing the PSA Certified Firmware Update API 1.0 header file for public availability, along with a final draft of the Update Specification.
Great – So what comes next?
PSA Certified Firmware Update is the first output of Project Centauri, a long-term project developed by Arm and partners to make it easier and faster to build secure MCU-based IoT applications. The goal of Project Centauri is to have a simple set of APIs that developers can rely on to build portable, secure IoT applications, and we are also working on defining the Open-CMSIS-CDI specification as part of Project Centauri. We also plan to enhance the initial version of the standard with capabilities such as partial update and update of individual components.
We are excited to share the PSA Certified Firmware Update API with you, and we invite you to try the software and examples showcased in our Arm DevSummit 2022 talk: Build and Update your IoT Applications Quickly and Securely: Introducing Project Centauri.
Register for Arm DevSummit 2022