Survey of Hardware-based Security support for IoT/CPS Systems

The growth of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) has considerably increased the customer accessibility, convenience and boosted the industrial productivity. However, the increased use of IoT/CPS systems raises new security challenges. Due to the nature of IoT/CPS systems that heavily depends on connected low computation power devices equipped with sensors, the security characteristics and needs of these systems differ from the security of traditional software-based security applied in conventional network devices. To secure the IoT/CPS systems, a hardware security support is needed as software-based security is inadequate to protect such systems against cyber-attacks. Recent Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and System on Chips (SoCs) can help in implementing a security system that extends to the IC level. FPGA SoC helps bringing complete range of scalable security and at the same time sustain the low-power system operation. In this article, a survey of hardware-based security support is conducted and introduced. Concentrating on hardware security will help users to have better insight about IoT/CPS security requirements, identify the vulnerabilities of these systems and give good information on how to build secure IoT/CPS systems.