ARM Community: TrustZone Ready Program documents - Ready for download! - ARM Community

The TrustZone® Ready Program is released this week to lead partners providing a cohesive set of security documents to the ARM Partnership. It is an enablement program that maps high level security requirements into required features of a TrustZone based platform and provides a blueprint of how to design a system that can meet the needs of content protection, payment and other markets.

Why is it so important?
There is a massive demand for trusted services and applications on our partner’s chips and this requires a security foundation that is built into the chips and common low level software. ARM is committed to making this support free and available to all. These design documents, checklists and security guidelines enable everyone to get access to the latest thinking on security fundamentals that have been shaped by many industry discussions. The simple legal agreement that provides access to the documents enables companies to offer suggestions for continued improvement, so this is really an example of the ARM partnership in action. Security engineering starts with the architecture and understanding which threats you are defending against. ARM has had many discussions across multiple markets and all parts of the value chain to create a single set of security documents that can be used as a design target for chip and device platform engineers. Previously, designers struggled with creating a comprehensive and achievable set of security design requirements that covered the needs of different industries. ARM is in a position to bring together our input and industry discussions into the program deliverables covering the main use cases for application processors: content protection, payment and enterprise. This information is now ready for easy download.

Information security requires hardware, software and services to be integrated.. Fortunately organizations such as GlobalPlatform and Trusted Computing Group (TCG) are working together on security APIs, compliance and certification issues. They tend to be implementation agnostic, so one of the most useful aspects of the TrustZone Ready Program is to map the needs of GlobalPlatform into security requirements for a TrustZone based system. The combination of the TrustZone Ready Program and the work of the GlobalPlatform Devices committee establish a unified approach to security. The TrustZone Ready Program should make it easier and quicker for a chip partner or OEM to integrate a Trusted OS to create a Trusted Execution Environment and get the platform or device certified. Creating a common security foundation that uses common language and definitions will be the base upon which it is possible to develop a widespread, reliable and trustworthy security ecosystem. This security foundation and standard APIs will enable a new market for trusted services and applications.

Today, we are announcing that the first release of TrustZone Ready Program. You can also receive an early preview of next year’s Trusted Base System Architecture that adds the hot topic of content protection. The preview will enable companies signed up to the program to provide comments and improvements before a wider release next year.

If you are interested in joining the free program you can find out more about it here or drop us an email at arm-trustzone-ready@arm.com.

Rob Coombs – Director of Ecosystems & Alliances, Secure Services Division, ARM, As part of the secure services team, Rob works across the entire value chain to help ARM’s partnership design-in system wide security using TrustZone based Trusted Execution Environments. Our vision is to simplify and expand people’s digital lives by securing the services they value on the devices they use every day.

Rob has over 20 years experience working in semiconductor Intellectual Property and silicon related industries. At ARM, Rob ran mobile marketing 2005-2009 and then helped to set up Linaro (an open source enablement company) in 2010 before joining Secure Services.