Future Trends in Secure Chip Data Management

Secure chips, e.g. present in smart cards, TPM, USB dongles are now ubiquitous in applications with strong security requirements. Secure chips host personal data that must be carefully managed and protected, thus requiring embedded data management techniques. However, secure chips have severe hardware constraints which make traditional database techniques irrelevant. We previously addressed the problem of scaling down database techniques for the smart card and proposed the design of a DBMS kernel called PicoDBMS. This paper summarizes the learning obtained during an extensive performance analysis of PicoDBMS. Then it studies to which extent secure chips hardware evolution should impact the design of embedded data management techniques. Finally, it draws research perspectives linked to a broader usage of secure chip data management techniques.