Why small devices struggle to be trusted

Cost and age. A secure element adds cost to every unit, and many microcontrollers in the field have no secure boot at all. Devices stay in service for ten to twenty years, so today's fleet reflects decisions made long ago.

The factory. Keys and certificates are put into devices on a production line, often run by a contract manufacturer. The brand owner has to trust that line not to copy keys, build extra units or load other firmware. Doing it properly needs hardware security modules on the line and a link to a certificate authority.

The field. At set-up the device must prove itself to an owner it has never met, often with no clock, little memory and an unreliable network. Many products fall back on a shared default secret or on trust on first use.

What helps. DICE gives small chips an identity derived from their firmware at almost no cost. Onboarding standards remove the default password. And a gateway can attest on behalf of old devices that never will. The first step is to know which of your devices can prove anything at all.