Symantec is expanding its security portfolio with a new Embedded Critical System Protection designed to protect IoT devices against zero-day attacks.
ATM manufacturer Wincor Nixdorf is one of the first to adopt it.
Symantec announced that it is securing over a billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including everything from televisions and cars to smart meters and critical infrastructure.
With IoT devices expected to reach 25 billion by 2020¹, Symantec is leading the effort to protect consumers from attacks on their internet-connected devices.
“While IoT innovation and adoption continues to grow, it also presents a world-class opportunity for new cybersecurity risks and the next hurdle to overcome. In the automotive industry, hackers have been able to literally steer the car and slam on the brakes simply from their keyboards,” said Shankar Somasundaram, Senior Director of Internet of Things Security, Symantec. “Symantec is working with manufacturers in the automotive, industrial control, and semiconductor industries, in addition to existing partnerships in the healthcare and retail markets.”.
As part of its broader Unified Security strategy, Symantec is investing in delivering the industry's most comprehensive IoT security solutions.
This approach includes authentication, device security, analytics and management that will help implement cyber-attack prevention in automobiles, medical devices, industrial control systems, and countless consumer electronics that we read about in the news every day. Symantec’s IoT technology portfolio includes:
• Device Security with Symantec’s Embedded Critical System Protection: Symantec’s new solution protects IoT devices by locking down the software embedded in the device to prevent and protect against zero-day attacks. Symantec has already signed a partnership agreement with Wincor, a leading provider of IT solutions and services to retail banking and the retail industry, along with other leading automotive and automotive ecosystem manufacturers.
• IoT Roots of Trust and Device Certificates: Symantec is working with leading chip and cryptographic library providers, including Texas Instruments and wolfSSL, to embed security at the hardware level. These partnerships combine Symantec’s industry-leading Certificate Authorities with partners’ embedded engines to create new “Roots of Trust,” the foundation for device security and encryption and information authentication.
• Code Signing Certificates and Secure App Services: To ensure that code execution is permitted on IoT devices, Symantec provides code signing certificates as well as a cloud-based signing-as-a-Service service for various forms of IoT-related code.
In its future plans, Symantec intends to help enterprises address IoT security by introducing new technologies, such as an IoT portal to manage the full range of IoT security through a single workspace, as well as analytics for security prevention and anomaly detection that may indicate attacks on IoT networks.
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Strategic partnerships:
• “It was important for Wincor Nixdorf to select Symantec to provide security for people conducting financial transactions at ATMs. Symantec’s core security technology combined with Wincor Nixdorf’s expertise resulted in a solution that offers best-in-class security against software attacks at ATMs,” said Karan Oberoi, global product manager – software security at Wincor Nixdorf.
• “Delivering secure, simple and seamless authentication requires the integration of certificates for IoT products,” said Gil Reiter, director of strategic marketing – IoT, Texas Instruments (TI). “To help customers secure cloud communications, TI is integrating Symantec root certificates into multiple IoT devices to digitally sign and authenticate Internet communications and firmware upgrades. In the future, TI will offer new features capable of validating secure boot with digitally signed code to help customers increase the security of IoT devices.”
• “The IoT market is hungry for a comprehensive security solution,” said Larry Stefonic, Founder and CEO of wolfSSL. “As industry leaders in trusted IoT infrastructure, wolfSSL Inc. and Symantec are meeting the market’s needs by helping developers secure against the three most fundamental IoT security challenges: Man in the Middle (MITM) attacks, secure firmware upgrades, and on-device data encryption through a combined solution.”
