Hardware security: Preparing students for the next design frontier

Hardware security (HS)has emerged as a premier design and manufacturing objective due to the confluence of economic, social, and technology forces. HS encompasses a wide spectrum of research and development directions ranging from intellectual property (IP) protection, hardware metering, and hardware Trojan horse detection, to design of secure smart cards, voting hardware, detection of explosives and chemical and biologic toxic materials, and protection of physical containers using electronic locks. Development of HS synthesis and evaluation tools have recently received a great deal of attention. However to the best of our knowledge, no HS courses have been introduced into computer engineering curricula. We summarize the course that was introduced at UCLA and Rice University, present its evaluation, and anticipate future directions to create an even more influential class.