Security policy enforcement in modern SoC designs

Modern SoC designs contain a large number of sensitive assets that must be protected from unauthorized access. Authentication mechanisms which control the access to such assets are governed by complex security policies. The security policies affect multiple design blocks and may involve subtle interactions among hardware, firmware, OS kernel, and applications. The implementation of security policies in an SoC design, often referred to as its security architecture, is a subtle composition of coordinating design modules distributed across the different IPs. Toward this direction, this paper gives an overview of SoC security architectures in modern SoC designs and provides a glimpse of their implementation, as well as their design complexities and functional shortcomings. Design of security architectures involves a complex interplay of requirements from functionality, power, security, and validation. We also outline some of the research needs in the area for developing robust, trustworthy SoC designs.