Renesas Electronics Corporation and wolfSSL have announced a multi-year licensing agreement whereby customers of Renesas’ 32-bit MCU offerings can get a free commercial license for the wolfSSL TLS stack with integrated Renesas hardware security engine support and the FIPS-certified wolfCrypt crypto library. All customers of RA Family, RX Family, and Synergy Platform MCUs are eligible for the commercial license, which incorporates technical support from wolfSSL.
A TLS solution built on certified, integrated hardware security engines such as the Renesas TSIP and SCE offers the ultimate mechanism to produce secure IoT products. The wolfSSL embedded TLS stack is a lightweight TLS solution written in ANSI C and aimed at embedded, RTOS, and resource-constrained environments – principally because of its small size, speed, and feature set. It supports industry standards up to the current TLS 1.3 and DTLS 1.2 levels and is 20 times smaller than OpenSSL. As well as full integration with the Renesas MCU’s hardware security engines, wolfSSL incorporates its lightweight crypto library, which has been certified to FIPS 140-2 Level 1. It supports the most popular algorithms and ciphers and progressive ones, including post-quantum key exchange offered through the Open Quantum Safe project’s liboqs.
Security is a crucial differentiator for MCU customers, particularly in the fast-growing IoT market, and the company offers a wide range of solutions and certifications. Earlier this year, it announced FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certification of the RX65N, the first such certification for a general-purpose MCU. RA Family Arm Cortex-M MCUs have obtained PSA Certified Level 2 and Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms (SESIP) certifications, with further NIST certifications planned. The company provides MCU devices with protections against timing and SPA/DPA side-channel attacks on crypto operations. All families provide devices with unlimited secure key storage, with the RA Family supplying simplified, secure key installation.
“As the MCU leader, we pride ourselves in delivering added value to our customers,” said Roger Wendelken, senior vice president in Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit. “In addition to the many security features built into our products, offering high-quality wolfSSL TLS and crypto software commercial licenses free of charge is a clear example of that philosophy.”
“Renesas shares our passion for security,” said wolfSSL CEO, Larry Stefonic. “We’re pleased that the very large Renesas MCU customer base will now have easy and unfettered access to our market-leading cryptography software to implement the best, most up-to-date security. Renesas is making it frictionless for their customers to do more with less effort; isn’t that what the best MCU vendors should do?”