M2mi Blog The SPECK Suite - The M2Mi, Department of Homeland Security: S & T IoT Security Suite

The USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS): Science and Technology: Cyber Security Doctorate recently awarded M2Mi a contract to build and deliver and open source IoT Security suite (dubbed the SPECK Suite) based on work with and from the National Security Agency (NSA). The SPECK suite will be open-sourced via the Apache Open Source License, addressing much needed cryptography designed for the "internet of things"SPECK is an in-genius software based lightweight block cipher that is designed for small form factor devices (256K memory upwards). SPECK offers performance characteristics that are half the size and yield twice the performance of comparable AES encryption[1]. SPECK is the software implementation of the lightweight block cipher, while SIMON is the hardware-based implementation. SIMON and SPECK is a result of pioneering work from experts among others such as Ray Beaulieu, Douglas Shors, Jason Smith, Stefan Treatman-Clark, Bryan Weeks and Louis Wingers. I started working with the NSA on the requirements for Simon and Speck approximately five years ago. The use-case was M2M and IoT and the need to provide next generation cryptography.The first public release of SPECK was during 2013 with the foundation paper The Simon and Speck Families of Lightweight Block Ciphers [1], since this period much peer review has been done such as Differential Analysis of Block Cipers SIMON and SPECK.SIMON and SPECK have also been submitted to become an open standard via the International Standards Organization (ISO) under ISO 29192-2 standard.As was the case when M2Mi started the OASIS MQTT standard which became the defacto standard M2M and IoT protocol, M2Mi will work towards a similar outcome and contribute towards addressing the internet of things security challenge.References:[1] The Simon and Speck Families of Lightweight Block Ciphershttps://eprint.iacr.org/2013/404.pdf[2] Differential Analysis of Block Ciphers SIMON and SPECKhttps://eprint.iacr.org/2014/922.pdf