#002: The secrets to building secure & scalable OTA infrastructure with Nick Sinas

In today’s Coredump Session, the team dives deep into the world of over-the-air (OTA) updates—why they matter, how they break, and what it takes to get them right. From horror stories involving IR updates in a snowstorm to best practices for deploying secure firmware across medical devices, this conversation covers the full stack of OTA: device, cloud, process, and people. It's equal parts cautionary tale and technical masterclass.Key Takeaways:OTA is essential for modern hardware—without it, even small bugs can require massive field operations.Good OTA starts early, ideally at the product design and architecture phase.Bootloaders, memory maps, and security keys must be carefully planned to avoid long-term issues.Staged rollouts and cohorts help mitigate fleet-wide disasters.Signing keys and root certificates should be treated like firmware—versioned, updatable, and secure.Real-world constraints (medical, smart home, etc.) make OTA more complex—but not optional.Testing both the update and the update mechanism itself is critical before going live.When OTA fails, fallback plans (like dual banks or A/B slots) can be the difference between a patch and a catastrophe.Chapters:00:00 Episode Teasers & Intro03:29 Meet the Guests + OTA Gut Reactions05:33 Why OTA Is Non-Negotiable03:29 The OTA Wake-Up Call: Why You Need It09:31 Building OTA into Hardware from Day One16:49 Cloud-Side OTA: Cohorts, Load, and Timing21:53 OTA in Regulated Industries30:10 When OTA Breaks Itself34:44 Minimizing OTA Risk: The Defensive Playbook41:18 OTA and the Matter Standard47:17 Networking Stacks, Constraints, and Reliability51:11 Security, Scale, and the OTA Future⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the Interrupt SlackWatch this episode on YouTube ⁠Suggest a Guest⁠Follow Memfault⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠Other ways to listen:⁠⁠Apple PodcastsiHeartRadio⁠⁠⁠⁠Amazon MusicGoodPodsCastbox⁠⁠⁠⁠Visit our website

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