Renesas Electronics launches RA Family of 32-bit Arm Cortex-M Microcontrollers (MCUS)

     Renesas Electronics announced that the RA family of 32-bit Arm® Cortex-M microcontrollers (MCUS) received PSA Level 2 certification and IoT Platform Security Evaluation Standard (SESIP) certification.

     The RA6M4 MCUS with the Flexible Configuration Software Package (FSP) have been certified at PSA Level 2, expanding on the PSA Level 1 certification for the RA4 and RA6 series MCUS. The Renesas RA6M3, RA6M4 and RA4M2 MCU product families are all certified to the SESIP1 standard for "physical and logical attacker" protection.

     In addition to widely recognized industry certifications, Renesas RA MCUS provide customers with advanced iot security by incorporating a NIST CAVP-certified secure encryption engine based on Armv8-M's Arm TrustZone®. The RA family of products incorporates hardware-based security features ranging from simple AES acceleration to fully integrated encryption subsystems isolated within the MCU. The secure encryption engine provides symmetric and asymmetric encryption/decryption, hash functions, true random number generators (TRNG), and advanced key management capabilities, including key generation and MCU hardware-related unique key encapsulation. If the correct access protocol is not followed, the access management circuit will shut down the encryption engine, and the built-in dedicated RAM ensures that the plaintext key is never exposed to any CPU or peripheral bus.

     Roger Wendelken, senior vice President, iot and Infrastructure Business Group, Renesas Electronics, said: "Renesas Electronics understands that security is critical for iot designers, which is why we designed the RA family of products with security in mind from the beginning. Today, these industry certifications further enhance the security features of RA products for iot applications."

     Carlos Serratos, Senior Director of Strategy, Policy and Communications at Brightsight, said: "We are delighted to partner with Renesas Electronics to complete the SESIP and PSA certification programs. The certification of the Renesas RA family of products is proof that safety standards are relevant to the industry. Oems are increasingly recognizing the value of certified equipment as an effective risk management tool and consistent with multiple equipment certifications. Certification is primarily for devices used in critical infrastructure and is steadily becoming the standard for other devices in the IoT space."

     PSA certification builds a framework for securing connected devices, from security analysis to security assessment and certification. The framework provides standardized resources to address the increasingly segmented needs of iot development, ensuring that security is no longer a barrier to product development. PSA Certification Through a third-party laboratory evaluation of the PSA Root of Trust (PSA-ROT), PSA Level 2 certification proves that the product is protected against scalable software attacks. The evaluation lab uses PSA-RoT vulnerability analysis and penetration testing to determine whether the nine security requirements of the PSA-RoT protection profile are met.

     SESIP is an optimized version of the Common Standard Methodology (ISO 15408-3) for evaluating IoT components and networking platforms. SESIP defines the Security Functional Requirements (SFR) catalog that product developers can use to build their security devices and extend them appropriately based on their specific threat models and use cases. SESIP also incorporates and refines Common Standard Safety Assurance Requirements (SAR), including requirements for ALC_FLR.2 defect reporting procedures. Renesas addressed the issue through the Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) process and public web channels. The SESIP method is designed for SFR reuse and mapping to other certifications, enabling product developers to properly certify their equipment against other industry standards, such as IEC 62443.