For years, embedded security sat in the category of “nice to have” — something you added when time and budget allowed, or once the product reached enough scale to attract attention. That era is over. Today, embedded systems’ security is mission-critical, and engineers who treat it as an afterthought will end up redesigning systems, patching preventable faults, or watching their products end up on vulnerability list feeds.
 
Embedded World has been pushing this message for several cycles now, and the reality has only become more obvious. When almost every microcontroller, sensor node, home appliance, industrial controller, wearable, and vehicle subsystem is network-connected — directly or indirectly — the attack surface is essentially the global internet. Putting an MCU into the field without proper security controls in 2026 is the equivalent of shipping a PC in 1999 with file sharing open to the world and no firewall.

This is a practical response to an industry where software supply-chain attacks, firmware tampering, and compromised IoT fleets have become routine. The embedded sector is now expected to deliver the same properties traditionally associated with “big” IT systems: confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, and resilience. The difference is that embedded systems must provide these guarantees on tight power budgets, tiny memory footprints, and decades-long lifetimes.

If engineers don’t prioritize this early, they will spend far more effort fixing it later.
 
embedded security is no longer optional
Embedded security is no longer optional.

The Expanding Threat Model: Everything Talks to Everything

A decade ago, an 8-bit microcontroller running some control loops wasn’t on anyone’s cyber-security radar. It probably communicated over a simple serial bus and sat behind a gateway. Today, that same class of device might talk to:
 
  • An IP-enabled wireless module
  • A cloud service
  • Several vendor SDKs and third-party libraries
  • Mobile apps via Bluetooth LE
  • An on-device bootloader that accepts updates in the field

In other words, it’s no longer isolated. Even low-cost, minimalist designs have paths to the outside world, sometimes indirectly through other subsystems.

Once connectivity enters the picture, the classic IT attack vectors follow:
  • Spoofed firmware updates
  • Credential theft
  • Side-channel leakage
  • Remote code execution via malformed packets
  • Supply-chain manipulation (compromised dev tools, poisoned libraries, tampered binaries)

These are not hypothetical. Industrial IoT deployments, consumer devices, and even automotive ECUs have been compromised through firmware updates, debug ports, and insecure companion apps.

The biggest shift is that attackers no longer care whether a device is high-value in isolation. Is anyone paranoid that an attacker will turn on their dishwasher remotely? No, but botnets, DDoS infrastructure, and lateral-movement attacks mean even a smart lightbulb is worth compromising.

When every node is a potential beachhead, engineering teams no longer get to assume any device is too small or too obscure to be targeted.

Hardware Is Finally Catching Up (Mostly)

The bright side is that silicon vendors have woken up. Most new microcontrollers and SoCs now ship with features that used to be reserved for high-end application processors:
 
  • Secure boot
  • Hardware root of trust
  • On-chip key storage (PUFs, HSM-style blocks, one-time-programmable regions)
  • Isolated execution zones (ARM TrustZone-M, RISC-V PMP)
  • Cryptographic accelerators
  • Tamper detection and active shield layers (on some secure MCUs)

The challenge isn’t the lack of capability, but that many teams still don’t enable or use these features. The most common four reasons:
 
  • Security features complicate development. They require careful provisioning and signing pipelines that don’t exist in the default board-bring-up flow.
  • Documentation is often fragmented or vendor-specific. Secure boot on one Cortex-M33 variant is not implemented the same way on another.
  • Security looks like “extra work” when deadlines are tight. Features get pushed to “phase two,” which never arrives.
  • Teams lack a unified security mindset. Firmware engineers, hardware designers, DevOps, and cloud developers often treat security as an SEP (“someone else’s problem”).

The silicon is ready. The processes often aren’t.

What the Current Landscape Demands

Strong embedded security is no longer about single features, but rather about end-to-end trust:

A trusted hardware foundation
  • Immutable ROM bootloader
  • Signed firmware
  • Verified update paths

Secure identities per device
  • Unique cryptographic keys
  • Certificate-based authentication
  • Keys that never leave the MCU

Resistance to exploitation
  • Memory protection units
  • Compiler hardening
  • Reducing the firmware attack surface

Protection of data in storage and transit
  • On-chip encrypted flash
  • TLS or equivalent secure channels

A secure development workflow
Lifecycle management
The key point: Security is no longer a bolt-on. It’s a continuous process across design, manufacturing, deployment, and maintenance.

Where Engineers Struggle Most

Across industries — from hobbyist projects to industrial deployments — the same stumbling blocks keep appearing:

Secure boot chains that are half-implemented

Developers sign the first-stage bootloader but leave the application image unsigned. Or they rely on debugging keys left open during production.

Weak or reused keys

A surprising number of devices still ship with:
  • shared private keys across entire product lines!
  • hardcoded credentials
  • symmetric keys embedded in firmware

Once leaked, the entire fleet becomes vulnerable.

OTA updates that skip integrity checks

Even in 2026, some devices still download updates over HTTP with no signature verification! This remains the easiest attack vector for IoT compromise.

Overtrust in “security by obscurity”

Closed firmware, uncommon MCUs, proprietary protocols, and other obfuscation techniques don’t protect anyone, especially now. Attackers routinely reverse-engineer obscure architectures.

No plan for long-term maintenance

Products live 10 to 20 years. Vendors survive three to five product cycles. Cloud backends come and go. Security plans rarely account for this.

Practical Steps Engineers Can Take Today

Security is intimidating only when tackled all at once. The best approach is to embed it directly into the design flow rather than adding it later.

Start with a hardware root of trust

If the MCU or SoC supports secure boot, enable it on day one. Build your firmware signing and provisioning workflow early, before you write a single line of application code. This prevents the “we’ll secure it later” syndrome.

Use per-device keys, not shared secrets

Modern MCUs have hardware key storage precisely for this reason. Provision unique credentials during manufacturing or first boot, ideally generated on-device.

Strip the firmware attack surface

Disable unused peripherals, communication stacks, and debug interfaces. Minimise third-party code. Every unused driver is still a potential attack vector.

Enforce authenticated updates

Updates should require both transport-level security (TLS, DTLS, etc.) and cryptographic signature verification of the actual image.

Model threats early

Not a 50-page consultancy exercise — just a 30-minute structured conversation:
 
  • What can an attacker see?
  • What can they control?
  • What could they physically access?
  • What happens if they get it?

You will catch design flaws before they become architectural problems.

Document your security plan

If your team cannot articulate how keys are stored, how updates are authenticated, and how the boot chain works, you don’t have a secure device. You have a a lucky one, for now.

Why Early Security Saves Time (and Money)

Security is often viewed as an expensive delay. In reality, implementations are often penny-wise and pound-foolish, because insecure systems are far more expensive:
 
  • Recalls due to compromised firmware
  • Emergency patches under time pressure
  • Customer loss after breaches
  • Regulatory issues (especially in medical, industrial, or consumer IoT markets)
  • Shortened product lifetimes because critical fixes are impossible later

A small investment in secure provisioning and architecture early in the design cycle prevents years of retrofitting and firefighting.

The other benefit: Secure devices remain useful longer. When your hardware can trust its firmware and update pipeline, you can deploy features, patches, or entirely new workflows years after launch.

The Embedded Engineer’s New Responsibility

The shift is simple: Any device with firmware is now a security-relevant system. Engineers are building trust, no longer just functionality. Whether you work with tiny Cortex-M0+ parts, powerful Linux-class SoCs, or emerging RISC-V platforms, the expectations are the same.

The community, the market, and increasingly the law expect secure behavior by default.

This is the backdrop for our 2026 Embedded World special. The show reflects a wider industry transition: from “security as add-on” to “security as infrastructure.” The days of treating MCUs as isolated control blocks are gone. They’re nodes in a global system, and their security posture matters far beyond their immediate function.

Securing Your Future

Embedded security is not exciting in the way new AI accelerators or ultra-low-power radios are, but it determines whether your product survives in the wild, stays trustworthy, and avoids becoming part of the next major IoT incident.

If you build embedded systems today, security is now part of the job — not an optional accessory.