Hardware Cryptographic Accelerators to Enhance Security Without Slowing Down

From smartphones to smart homes and even industrial applications, embedded systems are everywhere. But as these systems become more prevalent in our daily lives, the risks of cyber threats grow just as fast. That’s why it’s essential to build security into these embedded systems by design. And just as important as security itself is how it’s implemented.

Cryptography is a fundamental security mechanism implemented in modern embedded systems to protect the devices and the information they store, process, and transmit. Cryptography helps ensure authentication, encryption, confidentiality, data integrity, and non-repudiation—key pillars of digital trust.

However, implementing cryptographic algorithms is often a trade-off for device manufacturers: A trade-off between security and performance.

Cryptographic algorithms—especially complex ones—demand a significant amount of processing power. When a device’s main processor (CPU) is tasked with handling the encryption and decryption processes, it consumes valuable processing cycles, diverting CPU resources away from other critical functions. This can slow down applications, degrade responsiveness, and ultimately impact the user experience.

Further, with the arrival of post-quantum cryptography (PQC), things get even more demanding. PQC algorithms are more complex and require even more computational power than classical algorithms, and relying solely on the main CPU for processing them just won’t cut it.

This raises a crucial challenge for device manufacturers: How do you provide strong cryptographic security without bogging down system performance and impacting user experience?

This is where hardware-based cryptographic accelerators come in.

What are Hardware-based Cryptographic Accelerators?

Hardware-based cryptographic accelerators are specialized components built to specifically handle cryptographic processes, such as encryption, decryption, digital signatures, and hashing. When integrated into a processor, they take on the cryptographic processing workload from the system’s main CPU, freeing up processing power for other essential functions like running the operating system and managing wireless communications.

Here’s How it Works

Usually, when a processor runs security algorithms, it calls a security API, and the cryptographic operations are executed directly on the CPU. With a hardware-based cryptographic accelerator, the process remains the same on the surface—the processor still calls the security API—but the actual cryptographic workload is passed on to a dedicated hardware module (accelerator) instead of the CPU. After executing the cryptographic calculations, the accelerator then feeds the output back to the CPU. Having dedicated hardware for cryptographic operations helps significantly boost system performance while ensuring robust security.

Using hardware-based cryptographic accelerators offers several benefits, such as:

• Increased Performance – CPUs handle small, sequential tasks efficiently, but accelerators are built for processing large amounts of data in parallel. This means that while a CPU executes cryptographic operations step by step, accelerators handle many operations simultaneously. As a result, hardware cryptographic accelerators complete cryptographic tasks much faster and more efficiently than a general-purpose CPU.

Offloading cryptographic tasks from the processor also allows developers to use this extra processing headroom to integrate more advanced features and push the boundaries of what their applications can deliver.

• Enhanced Security – As specialized hardware for cryptographic operations, cryptographic accelerators can provide additional security features, such as secure key storage and tamper-proof environments, making it almost impossible for hackers to steal them.
• Energy Efficiency – Running cryptographic functions on a CPU is expensive. It burns power, eats up server resources, and doesn’t scale well. Hardware-based cryptographic accelerators can cut down CPU load, reduce energy consumption, and cut down costs.
• Minimal Software Impact – Because the processor still interacts with the security API in the same way, there’s little to no disruption to the system’s existing software.
• PQC Readiness – As quantum computers advance, hardware-based cryptographic accelerators can help efficiently execute complex lattice-based (CRYSTALS-Kyber) and hash-based (SPHINCS+) PQC algorithms.

In short, by using hardware-based cryptographic accelerators, you can achieve stronger security, better system performance, and a smoother user experience—all without overburdening the main processor.

Hardware cryptographic accelerators are especially valuable in high-security, high-performance environments like financial services and IoT. Let’s take a closer look at how they can help enhance security, efficiency, and compliance in financial institutions.

How Hardware Cryptographic Accelerators Can Be the Answer to Ensuring Faster and Secure Financial Transactions

Financial services organizations handle vast amounts of sensitive customer data. They also process millions of transactions per second. Naturally, airtight security is non-negotiable. But at the same time, customers also expect online transaction systems to be fast and seamless. Meanwhile, cyber threats are getting smarter, and regulatory bodies are watching.

When managing a high volume of transactions, traditional software-based cryptography processing can make it very difficult to scale up operations. As discussed earlier, the process is computationally intensive, it can choke up CPUs and drag down system performance, impacting transaction speed. Here is where hardware cryptographic accelerators can be a huge advantage for financial institutions.

• Offloading cryptographic tasks to dedicated hardware helps systems handle a high volume of financial transactions without adding latency, thereby improving transaction speeds.
• As hardware cryptographic accelerators are less power-hungry, financial institutions can handle more transactions without upgrading infrastructure.
• The financial industry is governed by strict security standards such as PCI DSS, GDPR, and PSD2. Crypto accelerators help meet their security requirements by ensuring robust, high-speed encryption across all transactions and stored data.
• With NIST setting 2030 as the deprecation deadline for RSA and other classical encryption algorithms, financial institutions need to start preparing for the transition to post-quantum cryptography and protect their high-value data from quantum-enabled attacks. Using hardware-based cryptographic accelerators can provide the performance boost necessary to handle and execute complex PQC algorithms that come with large-sized keys.
• As digital banking and fintech evolve, hardware cryptographic accelerators can make real-time blockchain transactions possible, which is huge for DeFi (Decentralized Finance) and NFT marketplaces.

So, Why Hardware-based Cryptographic Accelerators Now?

We’re at a turning point now in cybersecurity, with the transition to post-quantum cryptography. One of the major concerns around adopting PQC algorithms is their impact on system performance. Hardware-based cryptographic accelerators offer a logical solution to this problem. They help ensure high-speed encryption, seamless communications, and robust protection against quantum-enabled cyberattacks.

The road to PQC migration will be long and complex. The key is to invest early in solutions that support and simplify PQC implementation. AppViewX AVX ONE offers an advanced PKI and Certificate Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution with PQC-ready capabilities to help organizations navigate this transformation with confidence.

AppViewX AVX ONE brings together modern private PKI-as-a-Service and complete certificate lifecycle management for every certificate in a single solution to help organizations build crypto-agility, simplify PQC migration, and ensure security every step of the way.

• AVX ONE CLM provides complete visibility, inventory, closed-loop automation, and strong policy, governance, and control of your certificate ecosystem. You can streamline the discovery, issuance, and automation of PQC-enabled certificates, ensuring seamless management at scale—all in a single solution. Download AVX ONE CLM Solution Brief to learn more.
• AVX ONE PKIaaS is a private PKI solution, designed to support PQC-enabled certificate issuance. It supports all the new NIST-standardized PQC encryption algorithms – CRYSTALS-Dilithium, SPHINCS+, and Falcon (which is yet to be standardized). You can seamlessly issue PQC-enabled certificates for internal PKI use cases and take a proactive approach to future-proofing your cryptographic systems against quantum threats. Download AVX ONE PKIaaS Solution Brief to learn more.

AppViewX also offers a PQC Test Center, a dedicated free online resource built to help you assess your organization’s PQC readiness by generating and testing quantum-safe private trust certificates prior to their integration into existing systems, workloads, and machines. You can quickly set up your own quantum-safe PKI hierarchy and generate PQC-ready certificates and keys to test their compatibility in your environment. Visit the AppViewX PQC Test Center to get started.