Embedded Security
Boot Camp®

This is the course that built the company. Engineering firms have trusted Ontera’s security experts to teach their teams how to engineer security into their products from inception through deployment.

The Embedded Security Boot Camp debuted in 2012, when most firms (and generic training companies) weren't even thinking about security.

As of 2026, it has been taught over 125 times on 5 continents and is still the premier one-week embedded security course.

Curriculum

Detailed course curriculum can be provided upon request.

Embedded Security Landscape

First we'll take a quick flyover of embedded systems security. We'll define some terms and discuss some of the ways embedded systems have been compromised. Then we'll discuss some of the unique challenges specific to securing embedded systems.

Threat Assessment

Aspects of threat assessment. Threat modeling ensures you're protecting and prioritizing the right assets against the most dangerous attacks. Security requirements define specific, testable criteria your product must meet. Understanding how the threat landscape, open source concerns, vulnerability assessment and reporting interact. Lastly, we discuss compliance with new and upcoming security standards.

Cryptography and Random Numbers

Cryptography alone cannot make your product secure. But there are many ways to get it wrong. Understanding (truly) random numbers and their role in cryptography is foundational. Then we have cryptographic algorithms, modes of operation, key sizes, MACs and hashes, and all sorts of issues with key management. If you need to protect data inside your product from prying eyes and tampering elves, this is for you.

Hardware & Firmware Vulnerabilities

Hardware vulnerabilities can exist at the chip and system levels. Some are easily preventable; some are more subtle and dangerous. Often the largest attack surface is the firmware ("ship once, update forever!"). Fix one vulnerability, introduce two more in the process. How is firmware typically attacked? What are the most common and dangerous firmware vulnerabilities? What can we do to prevent them?

Secure Execution

You can party like it's 1999 but you shouldn't develop firmware like it's 1999. Embedded software is larger and more complex than ever, meaning a much larger attack surface. But we're not limited to 8-bit microcontrollers with a flat address space and minimal protection. Today's microcontrollers (MCUs) are more powerful and security-focused, and many offer built-in hardware guardrails to help you run securely. Features like the Memory Protection Unit (MPU) and Arm's TrustZone for Cortex-M exist so that when (not if) the adversary attacks, you can detect and stop the attack before it causes damage. But these hardware protections are complicated to understand, configure, and use correctly. Let's fix that.

Secure Software Development

The easiest vulnerabilities to fix are the ones that never make it into your product. How security-focused is your development? Sure, robustness is great, but security is a higher bar. Attacks only get better with time. Are you following the right steps to give your code the best chance of being resistant to attack in the field? We'll look at secure coding practices, code review, static analysis, testing, and other techniques for finding vulnerabilities before your adversary does.

Public-Key Cryptography

Public-key cryptography solves some types of problems that symmetric-key cryptography isn't designed to address. Algorithms like RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) have special properties that make them ideal for certain security needs such as digital signatures and secure key establishment. We'll discuss tradeoffs, performance, key sizes, risks, and attacks. We'll build on this foundation in several subsequent topics.

Secure Protocols

Using symmetric-key cryptography correctly can be tricky. Public-key cryptography can be even trickier. And designing protocols is always tricky, with timeouts, race conditions, replay attacks, tampered data, and more. Now imagine combining all three into a secure protocol. We'll explain what makes a protocol secure, what the attacks and defenses are, and what mistakes are commonly made. When you need data to be sent from Point A to Point B over an insecure channel, you need a secure protocol.

Secure Boot and Secure Firmware Update

Armed with knowledge of digital signatures, public-key and symmetric-key cryptography, secure protocols, random number generators, secure partitioned memory, and more, the student is now equipped to tackle two of the most important and intricate aspects of a secure embedded product: secure boot and secure firmware update. The boot process and firmware updates are two of the most common attack vectors. You can't prevent attackers from trying; you can only prevent them from succeeding. Learn how.

But Wait, There's More

When we're not training, we're either exploiting or defending. We're constantly folding new material into the course, updating topics as they evolve. The EU's Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) didn't exist when the course was created. Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) was once something to keep an eye on; today, the transition is already underway. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the security landscape in numerous ways. Ontera's Embedded Security Boot Camp reflects the state of the art in embedded security.

Our Instructors

Our courses are taught by experts who have written real-time kernels, designed mission-critical systems, testified in U.S. federal court, and reverse-engineered proprietary kernels from object code. Throughout each course, topics are connected to real life examples pulled directly from the instructors' experience.

Our instructors have taught teams at every major silicon vendor, more than a dozen medical device companies, and numerous firms working in defense / aerospace, transportation, industrial control, instrumentation, robotics and energy.