Hardware security is a discipline originated from the cryptographic engineering and involveshardware design,access control,secure multi-party computation, secure key storage, ensuring code authenticity, measures to ensure that the supply chain that built the product is secure among other things.[1][2][3][4]
Ahardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and managesdigital keys for strong authentication and providescryptoprocessing. These modules traditionally come in the form of a plug-in card or an external device that attaches directly to acomputer ornetwork server.
Some providers in this discipline consider that the key difference between hardware security andsoftware security is that hardware security is implemented using "non-Turing-machine" logic (rawcombinatorial logic orsimple state machines). One approach, referred to as "hardsec", usesFPGAs to implement non-Turing-machine security controls as a way of combining the security of hardware with the flexibility of software.[5]
Hardware backdoors arebackdoors inhardware. Conceptionally related, ahardware Trojan (HT) is a malicious modification ofelectronic system, particularly in the context ofintegrated circuit.[1][3]
Aphysical unclonable function (PUF)[6][7] is a physical entity that is embodied in a physical structure and is easy to evaluate but hard to predict. Further, an individual PUF device must be easy to make but practically impossible to duplicate, even given the exact manufacturing process that produced it. In this respect it is the hardware analog of aone-way function. The name "physical unclonable function" might be a little misleading as some PUFs are clonable, and most PUFs are noisy and therefore do not achieve the requirements for afunction. Today, PUFs are usually implemented inintegrated circuits and are typically used in applications with high security requirements.
Many attacks on sensitive data and resources reported by organizations occur from within the organization itself.[8]
