RISC-V International and GlobalPlatform sign MoU

This includes processors embedded with Trusted Execution Environment (TEEs), which are witnessing significant growth.

In 2019, GlobalPlatform reported a 50% year-on-year increase in the number of GlobalPlatform-compliant TEEs being shipped. Aligning specifications and exchanging information on known hardware vulnerabilities and the required functionalities to overcome them, will enable GlobalPlatform and RISC-V to update each organisation’s their respective technical documents and frameworks to address the evolving security needs of the IoT ecosystem. Short to mid-term examples are expected to include a focus on application programming interfaces (APIs) for the TEE, as well as microcontroller (MCU) protection profiles and the appropriate security extensions.

“A key objective of RISC-V is to bring the industry together and enable a new era of collaborative, open source hardware development,” said Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International. “Bringing the major open source hardware and security standardisation organisations together represents a sizable leap forward in enabling secure hardware development. We look forward to working with GlobalPlatform to bring real benefits to the ecosystem.”

Gil Bernabeu, Technical Director at GlobalPlatform, added: “GlobalPlatform has established strong collaborative relationships with key industry partners across the world and we are pleased to count RISC-V among them.

“Standardised hardware security provides a trusted platform for innovation. Secure components that deliver multiple security and privacy benefits are increasingly being used for more advanced IoT use cases, like healthtech, connected cars and homes, and Industry 4.0. As the IoT ecosystem expands, we look forward to working with RISC-V to align our technical documents and meet the needs of device makers, enabling innovative, secure solutions to be more quickly and cost effectively brought to market.”