Towards HW-SW Co-Design for Secure Industrial Real-Time Ethernet Applications

Real-Time Ethernet protocols are currently undergoing specification updates to include security features. These features generally take the form of a public key infrastructure and associated network node and message authentication and, occasionally, message encryption. The addition of authentication and encryption in hard real-time applications adds substantial expense to both initial implementation and post-commissioning maintenance. In this body of work, we seek to manage this cost and complexity using high-level synthesis to generate field programmable gate array IP from an open-source security stack. We detail the motivation, first steps in the establishment of a process and first results.