Enabling fast and secure IoT communication

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is used to protect IoT devices by encrypting data in transit and storing the TLS certificates used to authenticate devices to the application. Implementing TLS in IoT, however, comes with its own problems. Running on low power, IoT devices have limited memory, computational and network resources. IoT traffic therefore needs to be lightweight but TLS adds 2 extra round trips.

Avnet has partnered with Trusted Objects to introduce an architecture for constrained devices to use Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS). The protocol used is the light-weight User Datagram Protocol that delivers a faster stream of information. The result is end-to-end security from devices to application server. Certificates can be easily exchanged between the device and cloud server. The end user can also control the encryption key for encryption and decryption of the device. And if the device turns out to be a threat, the Secure Element can resist physical attacks