Axiado Samples Industry’s First AI-Driven Security Chip for Data Centers

Cybersecurity is a top priority for all CIOs around the world. And as you can imagine, the bigger the data center and the bigger the environment, the bigger the challenge. While major server vendors and security ecosystems are working with enterprise IT organizations to develop solutions, major data center players such as cloud, hyperscale, and telco face challenges of an entirely different scale. Additionally, the model of deploying servers that are built in-house or from an original design manufacturer (ODM), also known as a “white box,” presents challenges.

That’s why companies like Axiado design and build hardware technologies that provide lockdown infrastructure security for cloud environments, 5G deployments, and large-scale distributed data environments. Today, the company introduced the latest technology to its portfolio, the AX3000 and AX2000 Trusted Control/Computing Units (TCUs), designed to provide an AI-driven, hardware-anchored security platform. The company announced that these chips are being sampled and will be commercially available soon.

What is a hardware-locked security platform? How does Axiado differentiate itself? And what are the keys to Axiado’s success? We’ll answer them all in the next section .

it’s a crazy cyber world

No cybersecurity article would be complete without the obligatory “shock and awe” stats. In this case, the numbers are incredible.

As we all know, cyberattacks continue to increase year by year. As a result, the number of breaches also increases. And the results stack up. According to Cyber ​​Security Ventures, by 2025 the global GDP loss due to cybercrime is expected to reach $10.5 trillion. This profit comes from the cyberattacks that are launched against major organizations every second of every day. In fact, according to the company, he estimates that a ransomware attack occurs every 11 seconds.

Challenge to the cloud

As mentioned earlier, cybersecurity in the cloud is even more overwhelming than in the enterprise. These API-driven open source environments are easy targets for those seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in the software supply chain and other opportunities in environments that deploy hundreds of thousands of servers, networking gear, and storage devices. increase. An IBM study found that 45% of cyberattacks originate in the cloud, costing more than $5 million per incident.

The security needs of CSPs and hyperscalers are larger and more complex than those of enterprise IT organizations, but to achieve better economics they deploy infrastructure from server vendors (ODMs) most people have never heard of. doing. These servers are high quality and performant, but tend to lack the unique features OEMs designed to differentiate them. When it comes to security and manageability, CSPs often look to their ecosystem to further harden their platforms and environments.

This is where Axiado and its TCU come into play.

Axiado AX3000 and AX2000 – a closer look

TCU may be a term or technology that you are unfamiliar with, so it is important to set the context for the TCU space before entering the product. TCU is purpose-built silicon that provides security at the lowest level of the computing stack, enabling the foundation of a Zero Trust environment. Some of the major silicon vendors have platforms that can loosely be called Trusted Computing Platforms, such as Intel with SGX, AMD with Secure Technologies, and Arm with TrustZone.

Axiado takes this TCU concept and extends its security protections, including the integration of features such as a baseboard management controller (BMC) for management and telemetry, firewalls, and SmartNICs for platform and tenant virtualization. It differentiates us in many ways. Additionally, the Axiado TCU uses AI for real-time perception and response. This packaging does not add functionality. Adding more secure features and reducing the attack surface.

Axiado calls their TCU the last line of defense, but I would argue that the TCU is the first and last line of defense. TCU establishes a trusted computing environment upon startup, then detects and removes attacks in real time. Computing and network environments. And it starts with the Secure Vault architecture. This is a secure environment housing signed firmware, encrypted memory, a cryptographic unique ID for authentication, and a secure I/O hub.

What Axiado announced today – sampling the AX3000 and AX2000 chips is the next step in the company’s evolution. This TCU family offers the comprehensive protection mentioned above. BMC for basic management and telemetry. A secure root of trust and TPM for a trusted computing environment. firewall. In the case of the AX3000, it’s a programmable AI engine that allows security professionals to easily tune it for their environment and workloads.

For those wondering how the AX3000 differs from the AX2000, a word of advice – programmability. Both the AX3000 and his AX2000 use AI for detection, recognition and classification, but the AX3000 includes a programmable AI engine that customers can use to fine-tune his TCU to their environmental needs. is included.

In terms of features and capabilities, Axiado is the winner. But what makes this even more appealing to me is that the company does an excellent job of understanding the customer’s requirements and building his TCU in an expendable manner.

Axiado targets cloud and hyperscale environments with TCU. A market that relies on the Open Compute Project (OCP) to set standards for manageability, networking, security, and more. Additionally, OCP focuses on design and modularity, making it easy to integrate. Axiado is an active member of the OCP community and designed the TCU to the OCP Smart Control Module (SCM) specification.

So what does this mean? This will enable customers such as Meta, Google and other of his CSPs and hyperscalers to easily deploy his AX3000 and AX2000 with confidence.

What Axiado Needs to Succeed

From a functional point of view and to meet the real needs that exist in the market, Axiado has built a superior solution. But as we all know, great technology doesn’t always lead to market success.

I believe Axiado needs to do two things to be successful. First, you need to generate demand (pull) from customers deploying your solution (cloud providers, telcos, large hyperscalers with isolated environments, etc.). AWS, Google, Meta, etc. could benefit greatly from adopting Axiado TCU, but they must first adopt Axiado TCU. And defeating the first giant can be difficult. High-touch, highly technical efforts take time to foster partnerships. Furthermore, these efforts are not earned by human testing or benchmarking. They are won by real-world results.

Another important step is to foster acceptance and promotion from the ODM and (to a lesser extent) OEM community. This also has a bit of a push and pull kind of thing. For example, if he tells Tyan that a major CSP wants his AX3000 on their servers, the problem is solved. But with his ODM pushing the Axiado TCU as a key component to CSP’s security challenges, it will drive adoption.

The OEM community is an equally important partner. However, it can be more difficult as each of these players pushes their own secure computing solutions to differentiate themselves.

But as the saying goes, what customers want is what they get in the end. So if a big customer asks for a platform with his Axiado’s her TCU, all server vendors will support it.

This is why I like what Axiado is doing with their go-to-market program. The company takes a smart and cautious approach by providing kits to selected customers and closely managing his proof-of-concept PoC cycle, deployment, optimization, and management of these environments. .

lastly

The cyber threat landscape is getting uglier by the day. Also, the customer always seems to have an implicit trust in the cloud and her CSP, but this trust is misplaced. Your data is not secure as there will always be vulnerabilities in your infrastructure and network architecture that can be exploited for profit. Yes, even on the cloud.

I love what Axiado is doing with their TCU technology. It addresses the real needs of hyperscalers through a fully secure platform that protects some of the most valuable functions such as computing, networking, virtualization and monitoring/managing these functions.

There are many benefits for Axiado, especially if they get their first CSP customer. And based on what I’ve seen with his AX3000/AX2000, I think it’s probably more a question of “when” than “if.”

Of course, feedback from sampling customers will help us learn more.