ARCA Trusted OS for Raspberry Pi 4B -
Learn about CYSEC design choices and security maintenance processes

To extend their business, more and more organizations wish to deploy applications on remote and small edge devices at scale. Several organizations choose to execute containerized applications on Raspberry Pi 4B to implement this extension. Discover in CYSEC technical whitepaper what ARCA Trusted OS for Raspberry Pi 4B offers to protect your containers executed on remote Raspberry Pi boards.

With the democratization of edge technologies, companies are now deploying edge computing solutions for multi-purposes, broadening the number of their tasks. These solutions are sometimes pretty complex, as e.g. in the case of the use of (ex. AI/ML) algorithms. A way to handle the versatility and adaptability of these edge solutions is to adopt container based technology. A technology that definitely helps to cope with the necessary agility and scalability required by the use of these solutions. The consequence is an extension of the IT perimeter to the edge, far beyond the traditional company data center or cloud. This exposes the IT environment to new challenges and cyber threats with risk to deeply damage the company business.

This IT expansion can go pretty far in the edge where energy consumption and size are critical factors. In these cases, organizations rely on small computing boards that are based on processors with ARM-architecture in most of the cases. Among the commercial ARM-based small computing boards, Raspberry Pi 4B is a well adopted board by the industry for prototyping but also for production (especially in small and medium size companies). This board is pretty small but with powerful computation capacities. Robust and low-cost, it is a good candidate for industrial applications. Nevertheless, when a Raspberry Pi 4B board is deployed in the field with a limited physical protection, it is better to shield your system by choosing a hardened Operating System.

ARCA Trusted OS for Raspberry Pi 4B is a hardened Linux-based micro distribution designed to only execute containerized applications. ARCA Trusted OS has been designed:

1. To reduce the possibility of exploitation of potential vulnerabilities,
2. To ensure the trustworthiness of the infrastructure hosting and running containers in the edge,
3. To protect data stored in SD cards of remote devices and data communications within edge networks,
4. To keep container infrastructures up-to-date and secure in time.

A more detailed description of the technical design of ARCA Trusted OS for Raspberry Pi 4B can be found in the technical whitepaper attached to this blog. Furthermore, this technical whitepaper describes the internal processes that CYSEC has in place to provide security maintenance of ARCA Trusted OS for Raspberry Pi 4B in a timely manner.