Edge solutions are popping up everywhere this year, enabling a modern approach to infrastructures that allows businesses to run high-criticality workloads in not-always-connected environments. But their potential business value can be wrecked in a moment if securing the environment is not taken seriously. Onboarding edge devices securely is no walk in the park. Practitioners will have to navigate the faint path of developing a secure supply chain, establishing hardware trust, and maintaining ongoing security operations. Getting it right requires balancing robust security practices with practical, scalable solutions that are cost-effective for the sum of use cases.

The Edge Onboarding Dilemma

When an edge node shows up on site—whatever that site may be—the first step is clear: make sure the device is trustworthy and secure. Simple enough, right? Enter TPMs, PKI, remote attestation, FIDO, HSM, hardware provenance questions, BIOS and firmware configurations, and much more fun. Do you have a headache yet?

So, how do we tame this onboarding monster? We’ll explore three key issues: Supply Chain and System Design, Provisioning Edge Devices, and Operations & Security. If you do these things well, your shiny new edge nodes might stay under your control instead of spending their cycles mining bitcoin.

Day 0: Supply Chain and System Design

Day 0 is all about planning and preparing the foundation for secure edge deployments. This phase involves building a trusted supply chain, selecting software and hardware, and designing secure architecture patterns that set the environment up for long-term success.

Build a Trusted Supply Chain

• Hardware Supply Chain: One of the most important elements of strong security is to establish trusted supply chain vendor relationships. Engage with vendors to ensure security practices from the outset.
• Hardware Root of Trust: TPM 2.0 is an important part of creating a reliable, scalable hardware root of trust in edge nodes.
• Edge Controller: Determine where your edge controller will live and ensure it has methods to be deployed and trusted at scale. This is far easier if the edge controller lives in the cloud, but there are some advantages to having it locally as well. The edge controller will play an important part in Day 1 operations as a new edge node enters the production environment, attests its identity and measured boot, and gets configured to participate in the local ecosystem.

While supply chain attacks are possible and TPM has had some firmware issues in the past, these practices are still the best possible ways to mitigate numerous attack vectors for edge deployments.

Day 1: Provisioning Edge Devices

Day 1 marks the physical arrival and onboarding of devices. This phase includes establishing trust with a node in a production environment, a first measured boot, establishing secure communications, and additional configuration.

Secure Onboarding and Configuration

First things first… we need to establish a basis for trust in our edge environment, or everything else we do later won’t matter much. Imagine you just bought 50 new devices, and you’re pretty sure they didn’t come preloaded with malware from a dubious supply chain. Pretty sure… Nobody will tamper with the devices… pretty sure… Nobody will ever walk away with your devices and take them somewhere else… pretty sure…

Edge clusters are effectively small data centers or “clouds”, so we can take inspiration from many of the patterns typically used for onboarding new devices and establishing trust. Google’s approach is well-documented and interesting reading.

TPMs are at the heart of best-practice in this area. A TPM is a specialized, tamper-resistant chip that lives on the computer’s motherboard and that takes part in the initial attestation of the device and the generation and storage of cryptographic materials used in attestation, measured boots, and data protection.

To securely on-board new nodes, the following best practices can be followed:

• Establish Hardware Root of Trust: For most edge environments, the best practice is to use TPM 2.0 as a hardware root of trust. In some lower-risk environments, TPMs are not present (often due to cost). In these cases, having some device metadata from a manufacturer and the destination location registered in a system can serve as a basic way to minimize the risk of a malicious device being trusted.
• Secure Onboarding: Use a standard process for onboarding devices using PKI and certificates. This process takes place between an edge node and a local or cloud edge controller. Edge Controllers are administrative systems that provide functions like ensuring on-boarding policies are followed, or host services like PXE boot or artifact repositories (if local). If TPM is not present, this process presents as a presentation of metadata instead. We would advise some sort of digital signature by the manufacturer if at all possible.
• Measured Boot: For high criticality environments, it is important to continuously verify device integrity, especially when devices are remote or unattended. A measured boot is a process in which BIOS, firmware, bootloaders, and critical configuration are validated in a “chain-of-trust” on each boot. This chain can be validated by the edge controller before allowing the device to proceed in its on-network role, ensuring no tampering or other malicious activity has taken place. We recommend using measured boot over “secure boot” in edge deployments due to remote recoverability possibilities. With secure boot, any error or tampering will effectively “brick” your device. Measured boot still provides confidence in the device’s configuration, but still affords the possibility of remote recovery.
• Human Validation: In some cases, it may be useful to have an authorized human that asserts their identity alongside the initial provisioning of a new device, ensuring that it is in trusted hands in the intended location. This can be accomplished using protocols like FIDO with devices like YubiKeys.

These patterns are complex to implement, but critical to establish a high-trust environment for holding valuable business data and to ensure the reliability of the edge environment for running applications. There are some great projects in the Linux Foundation, such as EVE OS, that can help quick-start a solution by solving for these challenges in a somewhat-opinionated but useful manner.

Day 2 Operations and Security

Day 2 covers the ongoing management and maintenance of deployed edge devices, including monitoring, security updates, and handling threats.

Ongoing Operational Security

Maintaining security after initial provisioning is an ongoing effort. Best practices include:

• Physical Security: Physical security is “best effort” at the edge. Most edge nodes are not locked away in pristine conditions in a data center behind concrete barriers and laser-based detection intrusion with least-privileged human access… they are often in an office on a shelf or in a closet or mounted to a wall. Physical security will be more limited at the edge. While TPMs are tamper resistant, they are not tamper proof. If someone gains access and attempts to compromise, that generally results in self-destruction or zeroisation, but this would still brick the device. It is often prudent to disable USB (if not needed for a YubiKey or similar) while the device is in steady-state to limit potential attack vectors.
• Measured Boot & Credential Sealing: As we discussed for Day 1, measured boot remains an important function for a critical edge environment throughout its lifecycle, especially since tampering is possible in an uncontrolled physical environment.
• Signing: In edge environments, it is also prudent to sign key data items–such as configuration files or outbound business data or metrics–such that they can be trusted and and it can be confirmed they have not been tampered with maliciously or by mistake.
• Zero Trust: Principles from Zero Trust should be applied in the edge environment, most importantly in avoiding the assumption of a trusted local network environment.
• Encrypted Memory and Containers: Prevent data leakage and tampering by using encrypted containers and memory protection mechanisms as appropriate for the nature of data and criticality of the environment.

Layers and Spectrums

Not all edge environments are created equal. Some carry very low risks, while others are extraordinarily high (think national defense). Placing yourself on the risk spectrum helps decision-makers balance cost and complexity with the real-world criticality of their edge environment. As we say often at Edge Monsters, the simplest possible solution (that meets the requirements) is best when dealing with thousands of discreet footprints. Security posture will always be a composition of layers, and you’ll have to choose how many of these layers are needed for your environment.

Conclusion

Securing edge environments isn’t about chasing perfection—it’s about making informed, practical choices based on real-world risk. From Day 0 supply chain design to Day 2 operational hardening, each phase of the lifecycle plays a critical role in building and maintaining trust in your edge footprint. While no single solution fits all environments, adopting layered security practices tailored to your risk profile ensures that your edge deployments remain resilient, reliable, and ready to deliver business value. The key is to invest just enough—no more, no less—to confidently onboard, operate, and scale without opening the door to compromise.
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The Edge Monsters: Jim Beyers, Colin Breck, Brian Chambers, Michael Henry, Chris Milliet, Erik Nordmark, Joe Pearson, Jim Teal, Dillon TenBrink, Tilly Gilbert, Anna Boyle & Michael Maxey