ETAS and Rambus plan joint development of automotive cybersecurity solutions

Cybersecurity is becoming the new measure of quality for the automotive industry as software-enabled autonomous, connected, and electric vehicles all require the highest levels of security. With this in mind, ETAS GmbH, and its solution field cybersecurity (ESCRYPT), and Rambus, the industry’s leading supplier of hardware security IP, have announced a strategic collaboration to co-develop and provide a bundled security offering combining the Rambus RT-640 embedded hardware security module (eHSM) IP integrated with the ETAS SoC security software solution ESCRYPT CycurSoC.

Complexity is the enemy of security, for as complexity increases, the number of vulnerabilities that an adversary can potentially exploit increase exponentially. And the vehicle of tomorrow is becoming highly complex indeed as it undergoes a revolutionary transformation from a relatively simple mechanical system toward a highly interconnected system of compute, mechanical, and connectivity resources including dozens of ADAS/AD sensor technologies and billions of lines of code.

The next-generation vehicle will be a sum of service-oriented software built on a centralized electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture powered by highly advanced computing units. Emerging technologies like chiplet architectures will be harnessed to enable the high-performance SoCs required for advanced automotive systems. But these innovative new technologies will themselves introduce new attack vectors to compromise the safety and security of the vehicle.

Protecting automotive systems requires a defense-in-depth strategy, from silicon IP to software. Through this new collaboration, Rambus and ETAS will offer customers a bundled solution that combines Rambus’s next-generation RT-640 eHSM IP with ETAS’s market-leading embedded cybersecurity software solution ESCRYPT CycurSoC. This solution will address the challenges of the ever-advancing automotive SoCs, strengthen overall security, and provide a solid trust foundation for the defense-in-depth strategy from the chip to the cloud. With this solution, customers will realize greater scalability, lower implementation risk, and faster time to market.

“The rapidly expanding cyberthreat environment, and increasingly sophisticated adversaries targeting highly complex and connected vehicles, make strategic collaborations for integrated security solutions mission critical,” says Neeraj Paliwal, general manager of Silicon IP at Rambus. “This collaboration unites hardware and software security expertise and maximizes protection of next-generation SoCs for a safer and more secure future mobility.”

“With advancing software capabilities, the automotive industry is undergoing a rapid transformation to software-defined-vehicle ecosystems,” says Dr. Frederic Stumpf, Cybersecurity Portfolio Manager at ETAS. “This strategic collaboration will bring together best-in-class security solutions that support these advanced software features with robust defense-in-depth protection.”

Stay tuned for more details about the ETAS and Rambus security solution in the months ahead. In the meantime, the Rambus and ETAS teams are taking this new collaboration on the road at CES this week. Please contact us if you’d like to learn more about this powerful combination of software and hardware security for your next SoC design.