EdgeControl helps to strengthen the security of IoT networks by protecting access to IoT edge devices, such as sensors, actuators and IoT gateways.
The firmware running on such devices often needs to be updated for security purposes or to add new capabilities. Sometimes those firmware updates can be executed either Over-the-Air (FOTA) but it is often the case that this happens via physical access to the device by a field technician.
EdgeControl allows security professionals to specify the level of access that field technicians can have on a network’s IoT edge devices, such as retrieving the device status only, or performing specific firmware updates. The system creates a tamper-resistant history of all access rights granted and of all operations actually performed by the field personnel, creating a reliable audit trail on a blockchain network.
Human-machine interaction between the field technician and the edge device is intermediated by a secure NFC (Near Field Communications) controller installed on the edge device and an application running on the technician’s NFC-enabled smartphone or tablet. The blockchain backend was designed and built on Hyperledger Sawtooth, an open source Distributed Ledger Technology framework.
To develop and test the system we worked closely with STMicroelectronics, a French-Italian multinational that is Europe’s largest electronics and semiconductors manufacturer (€10 billion revenues in 2020). ST is one of the pioneers of RFID and NFC technology and offers a wide range of HF RFID/NFC products including NFC / RFID tags & readers and NFC controllers, including secure element controllers.
The R&D work that went into developing the BlockRTI system was co-financed by AVANGARD, a 22 million Euro collaborative project (Horizon 2020) researching the future of manufacturing, in which Ideas Forward and STMicroelectronics are partners.
