NEC, Arm Partner to Develop Secure IoT Solutions for Smart Cities Using AI

NEC Corporation has announced a strategic collaboration with Arm Limited (Arm) to drive the development of secure Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for Smart Cities using artificial intelligence (AI).

There is already a wide range of IoT connected devices in the market today and the selection will continue to rapidly grow. Ensuring the security of these devices is a top priority that poses a major challenge for many companies.

As part of addressing these issues, NEC will adopt the Arm Platform Security Architecture (PSA)(1), an industry standard framework for building securely connected devices, which includes the concept of threat modeling, architectural guidelines and implementation resources that reduce the cost, complexity, and risk associated with IoT security.

NEC has an accomplished history of enhancing the security of products, systems and services while contributing to the safety and security of customers in many different fields. NEC's innovative IoT security technologies(2) are consistent with the spectrum of mitigation approaches that the PSA framework encompasses.

"The pace of deployment of IoT devices is growing rapidly, and Smart Cities will be an important use case for AI-enabled IoT," said Chet Babla, vice president solutions, IoT Device IP, Arm. "Ensuring that IoT devices are secure is non-negotiable, and why Arm is working with partners such as NEC to shift the economics of security by providing the common framework that PSA enables."

NEC is also slated to unveil the development of a box-type accelerator(3), a specialized device featuring real-time facial recognition that will be securely managed and provisioned by Arm Pelion Device Management.

This accelerator will be equipped with the Arm Cortex-A53 processor. It will accelerate the device's facial recognition process and enable faster analytics by offloading the analytics workload carried out on servers or the cloud, thereby helping to reduce costs for networks and systems.

NEC's facial recognition technology is ranked as the world's most accurate and fastest by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) benchmark tests(4). NEC has already implemented over 700 biometric systems, including face recognition technologies in more than 70 countries and regions throughout the world.

"We expect the new accelerator to promote further adoption of face recognition throughout many areas, including the public safety, entertainment and transportation fields, as it contributes to the security and convenience of consumers worldwide," said Naoki Hashitani, SVP, NEC Corporation.

NEC has already begun developing a Smart City project leveraging Arm technology in the resort town of Shirahama in western Japan. NEC aims to begin a proof of concept hospitality project with Smart Check-In and Smart Shopping features in December 2018. These services are expected to enable visitors to check-in to hotel rooms and make cashless payments through the use of facial authentication. The project includes facial recognition with the new accelerator and is expected to be a reference model for expansion into a wide range of new areas.

"We aim to revitalize the regional economy leveraging IoT technologies and look forward to collaborating with NEC to drive the digital transformation that will help create new business for the Shirahama area," said Shin Okada, president and CEO, NankiShirahama Airport, Inc.