The French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (ANSSI) just announced that the number of ransomware attacks in France increased fourfold between 2019 and 2020. This is a dramatic increase and we all have in mind the recent attacks on hospitals and other communities in France.

One may wonder whether the embedded electronics industry, usually conscious of security issues, is really concerned by such ransomware attacks targeting large mass of sensitive and collective data? 

The answer is even more obvious after it has been made public that a world-level electronics manufacturing services corporation (EMS) has been the object of an attack involving the Revil/Sodinokibi ransomware. This event, along with other occurrences, demonstrates that this type of threat is also a reality in our ecosystem.

These cyber-attacks may cause significant damage and liability risks to all businesses. But as an EMS deals with its clients’ data, the harm can even be worse! In terms of confidence, the security of all sensitive data handled and processed by these EMS is now questionable.

To address this challenge, developers outsourcing their manufacturing will most likely converge on the fact security solutions are needed to protect all data sent to electronics manufacturers for programming operations, for instance software code, Intellectual Property code and other sensitive data.

Trusted Objects experts have an extensive risk culture, including the specific issues of code and IP protection during manufacturing. They have developed to-security to bring peace of mind to embedded software developers to protect their software IP all along the supply chain including during programming.