Swiss firm U-Blox’s Sara-R5 LTE-M module with IoT security-as-a-service has been distinguished as a CES 2021 Innovation Awards honouree.

The CES Innovation Awards programme, owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), is an annual competition honouring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products across 28 product categories. A panel of industry expert judges, including members of the media, designers, engineers and more, reviewed submissions based on innovation, engineering and functionality, aesthetic, and design.

“We are thrilled to see our Sara-R5 recognised as a CES 2021 Innovation Awards honouree,” said Samuele Falcomer, senior product manager at U-Blox. “With variants supporting integrated U-Blox GNSS and ultra-low power consumption, they are ideal for a wide range of IoT applications.”

Sara-R5 LTE-M modules with IoT security-as-a-service make it simple to protect data, both on the device and during the transmission of data from the device to the cloud. The modules implement end-to-end security where data are protected from the device to the end-user and are visible neither by the intermediate nodes and platforms nor by the service provider.

Its out-of-the box, simple, secure and cost-effective on-boarding process to cloud IoT platforms speeds up development, shortening time-to-market.

IoT security-as-a-service is optimised for low power wide area (LPWA) deployments that use resource-constrained IoT devices, such as industrial automation, sensor applications, connected health, metering, asset and vehicle tracking, and telematics.

By bringing all the technology building blocks in house and having hardware and software ownership with its Sara-R5 IoT modules and the Thingstream IoT service delivery platform, U-Blox says it can guarantee long-term device availability and provide lifetime support of the entire platform, from silicon to cloud.

“Thanks to the symmetric key management system that these modules utilise, the need for the creation, delivery and renewal of certificates can be entirely eliminated, with significant savings realised in terms of system cost, operational complexity and power consumption,” said Giovanni Solito, senior product manager at U-Blox.

With headquarters in Thalwil, Switzerland, U-Blox is globally present with offices in Europe, Asia and the USA.