Building Root of Trust

The need for building systems that are secure by design is being driven by increasing number of security threats and the cost due to system compromise. With the pervasive deployment of information technology in our lives the situation today is such that everything is a computing device - it can process, store and is networked for communication. There is increasing interdependence of all these networked computing devices which have kinetic impact on the real world. The increased interdependence leads to a situation where a security failure at one point can lead to a cascading domino effect leading to the ultimate failure of critical infrastructure whose failure can be disastrous to even human life and national security. Therefore, today the need for engineering secure systems is as necessary as the traditional engineering requirements such as performance, energy-efficiency, cost, programmability and usability. Engineering systems for achieving trustworthiness is a compelling requirement. This talk will introduce the challenges in realization of systems that are trustworthy and discuss the potential use of FPGAs in the creation of the critial "Root of Trust" which is vital for the realization of trustworthy systems.