The Platform Security Architecture (PSA) is a holistic set of threat models, security analyses, hardware and firmware architecture specifications, and an open source firmware reference implementation. PSA provides a recipe, based on industry best practice, that allows security to be consistently designed in, at both a hardware and firmware level.
PSA is a contribution from Arm to the entire IoT ecosystem, from chip designers and device developers to cloud and network infrastructure providers and software vendors.
PSA is scalable for all connected devices, offering common ground rules and a more economical approach to building more secure devices.
If you’re ready to get started, access PSA resources now:
Visit PSA resources
Analyze
The first stage of PSA is to analyze the value of your assets and the scope of threats they face. Threat Models and Security Analyses (TMSA) documentation can help with this modelling, and provide the functional requirements needed to mitigate these threats.
To speed up development, Arm provides freely available examples of TMSA documentation, created for three common IoT use cases. Learn more about the analyze phase and the TMSAs in this blog.
Architect
The architect stage focuses on applying the security requirements developed in the analyze phase. Architecture specifications outline these requirements, and the PSA Security Model provides important terminology and methodology as part of the foundation for other PSA specifications.
Implement
The implement stage provides an open source reference code and three sets of APIs that conform to the PSA architecture specifications for a consistent developer experience.
Certify
The certify phase, known as PSA Certified™, is an independent testing scheme developed by Arm and its security partners. The scheme is split into two key areas: PSA Functional API Certification and PSA Certified.
PSA Functional API Certification checks that software uses PSA interfaces correctly, through an API test suite.
PSA Certified consists of three progressive levels of assurance and robustness, enabling device makers to choose solutions appropriate to their use case.
Standardized isolation
- Designed to secure low cost IoT devices, where a full Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) would not be appropriate
- PSA protects sensitive assets (keys, credentials and firmware) by separating these from the application firmware and hardware
- PSA defines a Secure Processing Environment (SPE) for this data, the code that manages it and its trusted hardware resources
- PSA is architecture agnostic and can be implemented on Cortex-M, Cortex-R and Cortex-A-based devices
- The initial focus is Cortex-M-based devices
Standardized interfaces
- PSA specifies interfaces to decouple components:
- Enables reuse of components in other device platforms
- Reduces integration effort
- Partners can provide alternative implementations:
- Necessary to address different cost, footprint, regulatory or security needs
- PSA provides an architectural specification:
- Hardware, firmware and process requirements and interfaces
Example of IoT device implementation
- OEMs can choose their preferred implementations.
- Trusted Firmware-M will be a new OSS project:
- To reduce rework across our partners
- To speed up device or component validation against standards such as Common Criteria EAL
- Open to any RTOS and other partners
