Abstract: Various systems and methods are described to enable cyber-physical protections in edge computing platforms, including with countermeasures that mitigate and halt a variety of digital or real-world attacks. In an example, an attack detection and response engine is used to monitor processing circuitry, with operations that: identify operational data from processing circuitry that operates multiple layers (e.g., of an IP block) to perform compute operations, with trust of the processing circuitry established based on attestation of a hardware root of trust (RoT); evaluate the operational data to identify an attack condition at the processing circuitry, based on monitoring an operational layer of the multiple layers; and provide a digital attack response to the processing circuitry, in response to identifying the attack condition, to deploy the digital attack response and cause a countermeasure at the operational layer of the processing circuitry.

Abstract: Disclosed is a way of enhancing capabilities of an interface, such as a communications bus (100), while retaining backwards compatibility of the interface. The bus has a plurality of signal lines (250) including critical control signal lines. Legacy devices (102-103) present a legacy interface to each other over the bus by communicating with each other via a legacy protocol (251) over the bus. Critical control signals of the legacy protocol are conveyed by the critical control signal lines. New devices (104-105) present an enhanced interface to each other over the same bus by communicating with each other via an enhanced protocol (252) over the bus. Control signals of the enhanced protocol are conveyed by signal lines other than the critical control signal lines for the legacy protocol, so that the critical control signal lines remain idle or invalid for the legacy protocol.