In situations where a Raspberry Pi controls a sensitive process or a machine that may only be started by certain authorised people, it may be useful to protect the system with low-level authentication like a password or a dongle.

 
 

Enter the PS-45u DP “Raspberry Pi Edition”

The PS-45u DP “Raspberry Pi Edition” microSD card from Swissbit does just that. It adds boot-time authentication to a Raspberry Pi 2 or 3B+. Support for te Raspberry Pi 4 is being worked on.

Besides authentication, the card also makes the boot partition read-only to protect it against unwanted modifications, and it can encrypt the data on it using 256-bit AES.

Three Security Policies

The SD card supports three security policies: with a PIN, with a USB key or by means of an authentication server. In the case of a PIN, the user must enter a password to allow the Raspberry Pi to boot.

When a USB key policy is used, the Raspbery Pi will only boot if the correct USB key is present. The USB key, a Swissbit USB PU-50n “Raspberry Pi Edition”, doubles as a secured pen drive.

The third security option is by means of an authentication server that runs on another Raspberry Pi somewhere on the same network as the protected system(s).

As a bonus, as the PS-45u DP “Raspberry Pi Edition” microSD card is based on Swissbit’s industrial products, it is also hardened and therefore will last considerably longer than a normal SD card in a Raspberry Pi.