An easier solution for securely connecting IoT devices to the cloud

Author : Rich Miron, Applications Engineer at Digi-Key Electronics

19 June 2019

Despite growing awareness of the need for security, developers too often find themselves taking shortcuts in security for connecting IoT devices to the cloud. In many cases, the conflicts between the complexity of suitable security mechanisms, the limited memory and processing resources available in tiny battery powered IoT devices, and the need to ship product, seem insurmountable.

To address these problems and simplify implementation of security features in IoT devices, Microchip Technology and Google collaborated to create an approach that combines Microchip’s secure hardware capabilities with a simple data structure called a JSON Web Token (JWT). The result is an easy method for ensuring mutual authentication between IoT devices and Google Cloud IoT Core services.

This article from Digi-Key Electronics will describe the IoT device security threat and introduce devices currently being used to counter that threat. It will identify the security gaps and how developers and embedded system designers can use JWT to close them.

Click here to read the full article.