Why have updates?
More devices are getting 24/7 connected. Often this means life gets easier for users, but sometimes also for bad guys, like hackers. They are constantly able to scan for possible means of abuse on more and more devices. Just search the internet for stories about hacked cameras, home appliances and other connected IoT devices. Most of these cases are possible because devices are badly configured and possibly never get updated.
Devices or software which is not updated regularly can be seen as possibly vulnerable because most systems are composed of various libraries in which security issues are found over time. Those issues were probably not known yet during development.
If devices could just be easily updatable without any significant effort from your development team…. Well, that can be taken care of quite easily!
Why choose an update system
The many products we have seen being taken to the market are designed for a primary usability use case. Connect this or that, get certain functionalities or turn on that light. Almost never one of the core requirements will be the functionality and/or know-how about how to update devices to keep them secure. If you consider using an update system, you can tick off this requirement by reusing what other people have developed and tested already. Almost always this is a preferred choice compared to designing the update system yourselves.
Why choose our system
We have been active in the firmware update business for more than 7 years now. Under our supervision, we have enabled thousands of devices to be reliably updatable. As we think this should be one of the most important things to have support for in your products, we created a dedicated product for this. This allows for your device to be remotely controllable in a secure, reliable and proven way, without the need for significant engineering support from your own teams. We have already invested more than 3 and a half man-years in our update eco-system and accompanying test- and reference implementations. The eco-system also includes in-depth testing frameworks that can be used to actually prove the device (firmware) is always updatable (or can be downgraded).