Frohes neues Jahr :)
It is that time of a year where we assess our last year and reorganize ourselves for the new one. In this blog, we will make a flashback of the year 2021 from asvin’s point of view.
Wow, 2021, what a fantastic year it was for asvin. Though it was troubled by COVID-19 measures asvin spearheaded growth in all verticals. We completed all deliverables, attained each milestone and accomplished every objective in the year 2021. Largely, project tasks were performed in Work From Home (WFH) setup. But it didn’t stop us from cruising forward in the new year with success and smile. In the blog, we will attempt to cover all activities surrounding asvin in different areas.
Research Projects
Research has been core of asvin since its inception. We constantly research on internal innovative ideas and external technological trends to improve security of IoT devices. Along those lines, in the year 2021 also, we consolidated ideas and shaped them into well organized research projects. The research oriented approach has been very fruitful and has helped company to cement its foundation. Some of the important research projects are following.
asvinID
The asvinID project aimed to pioneer a solution to generate unique, secure and trusted identities for IoT devices based on their distinctive characteristics. The project was funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) under the StartUpSecure initiative. We did research on Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) and built a prototype based on SRAM based PUF using OKdo development board.
IoTrust
The IoTrust project was funded under the NGI TRUST. The objectives of the project were to research and develop a human centric solution to increase trust and security of IoT devices using noval bootstrapping, trust generation mechanism, over the air updates, peer to peer and distributed ledger technologies.
ESA BIC
The goal of the ESA BIC project was to perform research on local based services for IoT devices to strengthen their security. asvin developed a prototype to demonstrate over the air updates for IoT devices in geofence. The project was funded by ESA BIC Hessen & Baden-Württemberg.
Poison Ivy
The Poison Ivy is dedicated to research methods to prevent and detect backdoors in AI applications. The project is funded by the “Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Arbeit und Wohnungsbau Baden-Württemberg” in the scope of the AI innovation contest of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany.
Pilot Projects
In addition to the pure research projects, asvin also took upon pilot projects. The essential purpose of pilot projects was to quickly implement an idea to prove its viability, importance and scalability. asvin utilized pilot projects for internal and external demonstrations. This section includes both solo and collaborative projects.
Fed4FIRE+ Stage 2 Experiment
The project was undertaken to stress test the asvin OTA platform using high computing resources facilitated by Fed4FIRE+ testbeds. In the experiment, docker container app running on Kubernetes cluster emulated as IoT device to check scalability and performance of asvin BeeHive components Version Controller, IPFS Server, Blockchain Server and Encryption algorithms.
Anomaly Detection
The project was completed in collaboration with LPDG GmbH. The project resolved to detect security attacks on IoT devices by detecting anomaly in data using machine learning models.
Secure Software Supply Chain
In the wake up software supply chain attacks, asvin developed a prototype to secure software supply chain of IoT devices. The idea was to track the trail of a software from development until it is installed on a IoT device and record each event on distributed ledger.
NGI EU Atlantic
The project was carried out in collaboration with the East Carolina University and funded under NGIatlantic.eu. The main objective of the project was to stress test the secure bootstrapping and firmware update processes for IoT devices using EU and US testbeds.
What in 2022
We have started 2020 with an excellent project name D-SBOM funded under TRUBLO. It will address maintenance and security problems of IoT software. Additionally, Flexcar project has also kicked off. It will be completed in collaboration with DXC Technologies. We will build a prototype for cars to provide OTA updates and secure their software supply chain. It will be demonstrated at Startup Autobahn expo. In the Q1 2022, we will close seed funding round and expand sales and marketing teams. This will provide us the required impetus to reach new heights.
