PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Micro Digital Announces SecureSMX®
Next Generation RTOS

Costa Mesa, California, March 25, 2021 — Most Things are embedded systems to which networking has recently been added. As such, hackers coming in via the Hacker’s Highway (aka the Internet) can easily overcome the weak defenses of such systems and gain access to critical information such as encryption keys. As a consequence, entire networks become compromised all the way into the Cloud:

Micro Digital, Inc. is pleased to announce SecureSMX®, our next generation RTOS, which solves the security problem for microcontroller-based embedded systems. It enables partitioning embedded software into isolated partitions so that hacker invasions are limited in scope and cannot reach vital information such as sensitive data, keys, passwords, etc., nor access code or I/O in other partitions. The main embedded software can be run in a single privileged partition, with little modification. Vulnerable software such as network stacks, drivers, SOUP, etc. can be moved into unprivileged partitions, which are wholly isolated from the main embedded software and from each other.

In order to accomplish full isolation between partitions, SecureSMX provides the following:

• Effective privileged mode (pmode)/unprivileged mode (umode) processor control.
• Efficient, flexible task-based Memory Protection Unit (MPU) control.
• Software Interrupt (SWI) API for system services.
• Multi-heap support.
• Partition portals.

Normally, embedded applications run entirely in pmode, when they are first ported to SecureSMX, since this requires only minor modifications to be made to them. Then vulnerable and untrusted code is moved into isolated umode partitions in order to protect the main software from hacking and malware. SecureSMX provides the necessary tools to accomplish this with moderate effort

SecureSMX currently supports all MCUs based upon the Cortex-v7M and Cortex-v8M architectures. These account for most microcontroller units (MCUs) in use today. SecureSMX provides several methods to gain efficient memory usage for v7M processors, despite problems caused by the v7M MPU region size and alignment requirements. As v8M processors become more common, SecureSMX permits security and structuring improvements made to current v7M systems to be carried over to new v8M systems. Since partitioning fosters modularity, this can result in considerable labor savings, as well as strong security for new things.

For further information about SecureSMX see www.smxrtos.com/securesmx.

Availability and Licensing

SecureSMX is available now. It is licensed per developed product and includes full source code, 3 months of technical support, and no per-seat charges. All of Micro Digital’s software is licensed royalty-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

About SMX

The focus of the SecureSMX RTOS is to increase safety, security, and reliability of embedded systems, and to offer features, tools, and support needed to ease application development so projects finish on time.

About Micro Digital

Micro Digital, Inc. has been in the embedded systems business for 45 years and has been producing and selling embedded software products for over 30 years. Micro Digital is dedicated to providing quality products and support for embedded systems at moderate prices. We may be contacted at 714-437-7333 or sales@smxrtos.com.

Trademarks used above are the properties of their respective owners.
SecureSMX is a registered trademark of Micro Digital, Inc.

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