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TIOL111: Can you add security to an IO Link Interface?

John Griffith
Mastermind 21942 points
Part Number: TIOL111


Hello,

Have you seen a customer add any type of security or encryption to an IO Link interface? My customer is looking to authenticate devices that plug into a console. IO link looks to be a good fit with the exception that they want to make sure that knock off devices cannot be used so some form of security is needed. 

Thanks,

John

  • 0
    TI__Guru 74322 points

    John,

    I appreciate you posting this to E2E. I've notified our IO-Link experts of the question and they will respond by tomorrow.

    Regards,

    Eric Hackett 

  • +1 in reply to Eric Hackett
    TI__Mastermind 34590 points

    Hi John,

    I haven't personally seen any applications where this topic has come up.  I know there is an IO-Link Safety Description document on IO-Link.com that seems to discuss what you are generally asking about.

    From a physical layer and our transceivers, there is nothing I know of and instead this must be done with an additional protocol layer between the Master MCU and the Device MCU.  If the customer just wanted to identify their own modules, then perhaps they could build into the firmware an additional identifier register into the MCU that could be polled.  But the technical details on what is involved with getting something like this built into the firmware from a system level is beyond the transceiver physical layer that I'm most knowledgeable about.

    The referenced document seems like it would provide some level of authentication but it may be overkill for what the customer wants to do, but give that a look.

    Regards,

    Jonathan

  • 0 in reply to Jonathan Nerger
    TI__Mastermind 21942 points

    Hi Jonathan,

    Nice to hear from you and thanks for the quick response! This is exactly what I was thinking (of our device as strictly part of the physical layer) and therefore any security is up to the customer to program into their system. 

    Appreciate it,

    John