What’s missing from many smart homes today?

In the home of the future, many different types of sensors will allow the owner and authorized users to activate several functions remotely. To avoid unauthorized users from accessing these systems and even gaining entry into the home, security must be designed in. At Sensors Expo 2019 in San Jose, Steve Hanna from Infineon who is also a Work Group Chair in the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), demonstrates different future smart home functions and explains how the TCG Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and other security products from Infineon can be used to authenticate access through the cloud.

In a smart home, radar sensors allow a gesture to turn a light on or off, speech sensors can cause a garage door to open or close and opening or closing a door can be sensed to initiate several functions in the home. Since many of these sensed functions can leave the home and the home owner vulnerable to unwanted access, security is even more critical in a smart home.

In a protected home system, a Trusted Platform Module chip authenticates the smart home to the cloud for secure communication between the cloud the smart home. A remote control with a Bluetooth Low Energy can turn on or off various functions in the home when authenticated through an Optiga Trust X TPM. For most home and commercial applications, the SLS32AIA020X4 is offered for a standard temperature range of -25 to +85°C and for harsh industrial environments, the SLS32AIA020X2 provides an extended temperature range of -40 to +105°C.

The high-end security controller provides one-way authentication using ECDSA, mutual authentication using Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) client (Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard RFC 6347) and secure communication using DTLS.