Infineon and Thistle focus on Secure Edge AI with OPTIGA Trust M

Infineon Technologies and Thistle Technologies have announced a strategic partnership aimed at enhancing the security of Secure Edge AI applications. By incorporating Infineon’s OPTIGA™ Trust M into the Thistle Security Platform for Devices, the two companies are working together to provide robust protection for AI models and the sensitive data they handle through hardware-backed cryptography.

This collaboration is particularly significant for OEMs deploying machine learning at the edge, as it offers a new approach to safeguarding intellectual property in AI applications and securing training datasets in embedded devices.

Enhanced Security with Hardware Root of Trust

The updated Security Platform for Devices from Thistle now integrates Infineon’s OPTIGA™ Trust M as a hardware-based root of trust. This integration delivers cloud-managed security components tailored for Linux-based systems and microcontroller-driven products, enabling OEMs to implement proven security foundations quickly and efficiently across their device fleets.

With the OPTIGA™ Trust M security controller, devices benefit from tamper-resistant key storage, secure provisioning, and essential cryptographic operations like encryption and decryption. This ensures that only trusted AI models are authenticated and deployed on the devices.

The Secure Edge AI solution offers several key features to enhance security:

• Hardware-backed model encryption: Each device is equipped with a unique AES 256-bit key stored in OPTIGA™ Trust M, ensuring that model encryption keys remain secure within the device. This prevents exposure of manufacturer IP even in the case of device disassembly or decommissioning.
• Secured model provenance: Over-the-air updates are cryptographically signed and can be traced back to the training platform, providing tamper-evident delivery of updates.
• Signed data and lineage: Devices have the capability to sign collected data and attach provenance metadata, allowing downstream systems to verify both data integrity and model version authenticity.

Industry Endorsement and Product Availability

Animesh Ranjan, Head of Partnerships & Ecosystem at Infineon, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration with Thistle Technologies, emphasizing the importance of delivering enhanced protection for AI models at the edge. According to Ranjan, the combination of OPTIGA Trust M and the Thistle Security Platform offers device manufacturers a practical and scalable hardware-anchored security solution.

Window Snyder, CEO of Thistle Technologies, highlighted the commitment to making robust security capabilities accessible to device makers. By leveraging Infineon’s OPTIGA Trust M and the Thistle Security Platform, manufacturers can quickly deploy AI models and data with proven cryptography, enabling secure verification, encryption, and updates at scale.

The Secure Edge AI solution, which combines the strengths of Infineon and Thistle Technologies, is now available as part of the Thistle Security Platform, providing device makers with a straightforward and effective way to enhance the security of their AI applications.