SEnSE – An Architecture for a Safe and Secure Integration of Safety-Critical Embedded Systems

Embedded systems that communicate with each other over the internet and build up a larger, loosely coupled (hardware) system with an unknown configuration at runtime is often referred to as a cyberphysical system. Many of these systems can become, due to its associated risks during their operation, safety critical. With increased complexity of such systems, the number of configurations can either be infinite or even unknown at design time. Hence, a certification at design time for such systems that documents a safe interaction for all possible configurations of all participants at runtime can become unfeasible. If such systems come together in a new configuration, a mechanism is required that can decide whether or not it is safe for them to interact. Such a mechanism can generally not be part of such systems for the sake of trust. Therefore, we present in the following sections the SEnSE device, short for Secure and Safe Embedded, that tackles these challenges and provides a secure and safe integration of safety-critical embedded systems.