GlobalPlatform, a collaboration between service providers and device manufacturers for secure digital services and devices and RISC-V International, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to accelerate the development of open standards for the hardware design of embedded components in connected devices for the Internet of Things (IoT).

This includes processors embedded with Trusted Execution Environment (TEEs), which are witnessing significant growth.

In 2019, GlobalPlatform reported a 50 percent year-on-year increase in the number of GlobalPlatform-compliant TEEs being shipped. Aligning specifications and exchanging information on known hardware vulnerabilities and the required functionalities to overcome them, will enable GlobalPlatform and RISC-V to update each organization’s their respective technical documents and frameworks to address the security needs of the IoT ecosystem. Short to mid-term examples are expected to include a focus on application programming interfaces (APIs) for the TEE, as well as microcontroller (MCU) protection profiles and the appropriate security extensions.

“A key objective of RISC-V is to bring the industry together and enable a new era of collaborative, open source hardware development,” says Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International. “Bringing the major open source hardware and security standardization organizations together represents a sizable leap forward in enabling secure hardware development. We look forward to working with GlobalPlatform to bring real benefits to the ecosystem.”

Gil Bernabeu, Technical Director at GlobalPlatform, adds, “GlobalPlatform has established strong collaborative relationships with key industry partners across the world and we are pleased to count RISC-V among them.

“Standardized hardware security provides a trusted platform for innovation. Secure components that deliver multiple security and privacy benefits are increasingly being used for more advanced IoT use cases, like healthtech, connected cars and homes, and Industry 4.0. As the IoT ecosystem expands, we look forward to working with RISC-V to align our technical documents and meet the needs of device makers, enabling innovative, secure solutions to be more quickly and cost effectively brought to market.”

RISC-V International was founded to build an open, collaborative community of software and hardware innovators based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). RISC-V International, a non-profit organization controlled by its members, directs the future development and drives the adoption of the RISC-V ISA. Members of RISC-V have access to and participate in the development of the RISC-V ISA specification and extensions as well as related hardware and software.

GlobalPlatform's existing work to standardize and certify secure components, alongside APIs to secure devices from the root of trust to the cloud, has been built upon with the announcement of recent new initiatives. In October the organization unveiled IoTopia, a framework to better secure and manage IoT devices, and more recently GlobalPlatform announced its support for Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms (SESIP) methodology.