A security-enhanced design methodology for embedded systems

Abstract

Designing an embedded system is a complex process that involves working both on hardware and on software. Designers often optimize the systems that they design for specific applications; an optimal system is the one that can execute the desired set of applications with the required performances at the lowest possible cost. Cost may be expressed in different ways such as, for example, energy consumption and/or silicon area. Security is being, in the common practice, disregarded during this phase and inserted in later stages of the design process, thus obtaining non optimal and/or non safe systems. In this paper we propose a design methodology for embedded systems that integrate the choice of suitable design solutions into the early stages of the design process. The main purpose of this methodology is to provide a way to evaluate security as an additional optimization parameter. Along with a description of the methodology, in this paper we also show a case study that explains how the methodology can be applied and that proves its effectiveness.