Foundries.io Tightens Edge, IoT Integration to Boost Security

Foundries.io emerged from stealth with the notion that tight integration and instant software updates are the best security for edge, embedded, and IoT devices. That philosophy is behind the company’s “microPlatforms” software that target devices running Linux or Zephyr distributions for the embedded, IoT, connected device, and edge markets. The Foundries.io platform allows for security and bug fix updates to be immediately sent to those devices. The software includes firmware, kernel, services, and application support, with Foundries.io handling the engineering, testing, and deployment of those updates. “Rather than original software builds being maintained for product lifetimes that can reach 10 years or more, the microPlatforms are built from the ground up to enable product manufacturers to always and immediately selectively deploy the latest security updates, bug fixes, and new features to their customers, ensuring the safety of the internet of things and the security of data throughout the network,” explained Foundries.io CEO George Grey. The software can run customer-specific services and applications natively or in containers using Kubernetes as an orchestration layer. This allows remote management of the product software from private or public cloud device management platforms on edge devices using standard enterprise tools such as Ansible and Kubernetes. The platform is also cloud agnostic so a company can plug into their current management platform. This would include something like Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) Greengrass platform. Grey said that every embedded product today serving the IoT space is different in terms of its core platform software. This has led to fragmentation in the market and that puts strain on the security of the platform.