Hardware security

Hardware security as a discipline originated out of cryptographic engineering and involves hardware 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.

A hardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages digital keys for strong authentication and provides cryptoprocessing. These modules traditionally come in the form of a plug-in card or an external device that attaches directly to a computer or network server.

Hardware backdoors are backdoors in hardware.

A physical unclonable function (PUF) 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 a one-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 a function. Today, PUFs are usually implemented in integrated 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.

See also

• Computer compatibility
• Proprietary software
• Free and open-source software
  • Comparison of open-source operating systems
• Trusted Computing
• Computational trust
• Fingerprint (computing)
• Differential power analysis
• Supply chain security
• List of computer hardware manufacturers
• Consumer protection