Secure Mobile Hardware is Priceless
August 19, 2010
By Linh Hong
With smart phones accounting for an increasing share of the mobile handheld market, more services and applications are being added, including premium TV and games, mobile banking, e-commerce, and even airline check-ins. With so much of one’s private data — such as credit and debit card numbers — stored on the mobile device, the mobile handheld must become a highly secure system to gain adoption of the new services and applications. The smart phone must have hardware and software security to protect against malware and reduce fraud, data theft, and theft of service.
On the hardware side, an essential security component in the subscriber identity module (SIM), baseband, and application processor integrated circuits is an electronic hiding place for secure boot code and keys. From digital rights management (DRM) to mobile TV applications, secure boot is required to prevent modification or replacement of boot images, and keys are required for different cryptography standards including public and symmetric keys. Today, non-volatile memory (NVM) including EEPROM, Flash, electrical fuse, and antifuse is used as the storage element in consumer products like set-top boxes, DTV and mobile handsets. But with increased smart phone security requirements, from e-commerce to mobile banking, not all NVM technologies used today will be viable in the future.