The Challenge
Deciso, a company based and founded in The Netherlands, is a highly innovative company that develops network appliances and middleware software. Deciso’s field of expertise ranges from open source firewall & utm technology to telecommunications and business intelligence. From its start in the year 2000, it has had a strong focus on open source technology. Open Source Software is used all around from their back-end systems to the turn-key appliances available from their resellers. As such, Deciso is an active sponsor of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) and founder of the the OPNsense firewall software.
Being open source advocates, it was only natural for Deciso to base the firmware foundation of their AMD-based hardware architecture also on open source bootloaders. This worked well for some time, but also posed some challenges when the companies products evolved into ruggedized firewall systems and security was of top priority.
With OPNsense, Deciso can control security on the middleware level, but for the bootloader there are two major aspects beyond their control: decency on certain required object code building blocks originating from the silicon vendor, and the limited open source resources for finding, fixing and testing bugs and security flaws close to the silicon level. Particularly the last aspect became a growing concern when ethical hackers and the media revealed serious security issues in more recent bootloaders and BIOS. Hence the strategical decision was made to step away from open source bootloaders and partner with an Independent BIOS Vendor with a commercial BIOS product and resources to customize the firmware for Deciso’s platforms.
The Solution
AMD’s Customer Reference Boards (CRB) for their line of embedded CPU’s and GPU’s are shipped with the InsydeH2O UEFI BIOS firmware already pre-installed. The firmware is fully tested, industry compliant and supports all features and peripherals of the CRB including the latest security features. All major Operating Systems are supported, making it very easy to test and validate the requirements of the platform for OEM’s and ODM’s designs.
This is exactly what Deciso did before they contacted Logic Technology, the Insyde Software sales partner for Europe. From the beginning it was clear to both parties that InsydeH2O was a good match because of Insyde Software’s dedicated Office of Security & Trust Defense that not only keeps track of any potential security issues in the firmware landscape but also acts immediately with remediation and open communication to their customers.
What made the partnership perfect is Insyde Software’s capability to customize and maintain the InsydeH2O UEFI BIOS to Deciso’s standards and requirements.
The Results
The complexity of customizing and maintenance of secure and reliable UEFI firmware is handed over to the developer of the UEFI firmware, allowing Deciso to focus on what makes them stand out: the development and manufacturing of state of the art complex gateway electronics with OPNsense firewall software.
With each new design, Deciso now knows in advance the cost of firmware customization and maintenance, important factors in the development and manufacturing budgets. Not at least important: when the customized and tested firmware will be available for a particular platform, streamlining board design and testing with bootable firmware.
About Deciso
Deciso is a highly innovative company that develops network appliances and middleware software
“In being the local partner in the same time zone, Logic Technology plays a center role in the continuing processes, overlooking schedules, resources and priorities. Whenever there is an issue or a question, Deciso has a direct line to Logic with short response times.”
Jos Schellevis – Managing Director Deciso
About Insyde
Insyde Software is a leading global provider of system firmware and software engineering services for companies in the mobile, desktop, server, and embedded systems industries.