How Secure-IC is Making the Cyber World a Safer Place

Securing the data and all the associated transactions that comprise our hyper-connected world is a daunting task. Security touches the hardware, software and all the channels connecting every device and every transaction. Threats can be embedded in software, hardware or systems can be compromised externally using a large array of active and passive technologies. The breadth of this problem can be overwhelming, and the coming maturity of quantum computers promises to make it a lot easier to break current state-of-the-art encryption. Fortunately, there is growing focus on holistic security and some companies are dedicated to this cause. Secure-IC is one such company that brings a wide array of technologies to bear on this problem. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with a couple of veteran technologists at Secure-IC to explore some of the company’s capabilities and impact. Let’s explore how Secure-IC is making the cyber world a safer place.

An Overview

Secure-IC is a unique company that provides a wide range of hardware and software security technologies. The company also provides tools and services to analyze existing systems for potential security holes. As an introduction, you can learn about the company’s rugged security solutions here, and what Secure-IC is doing about the quantum computing threat here.

Stepping back a bit, the collection of hardware and software tools and technologies from Secure-IC are offered under the Securyzr™ brand. Capabilities to evaluate the robustness of a system are offered under the Laboryzr™ brand. Let’s explore each of these offerings through the eyes of my contacts at the company.

Securyzr

Brice Moreau is a Product Management Engineer at Secure-IC. He has been with the company for over 11 years. His focus for our discission was Securyzr. Brice began with an overview of the architecture of Secure-IC’s hardware, including the RISC processor, the various system interfaces, monitors, accelerators and memories. There are many dimensions to the technology, and I began to see how everything fits together.

Brice took me through a demo for the boot-up of a system, all the safeguards required, and a view of the data transactions monitored. In-system operation was then shown with many of the safeguards active. This includes sensing an externally driven temperature overload intended to put the system in a non-standard state. This event is logged, and appropriate action is taken. In this short demo, I got a feeling for the robustness of the Secure-IC solution. An overview of the wide range of applications supported was also provided, which paved the way for our next discission.

Next, Brice discussed the Securyzr S700 Series, which provides capabilities focused on security for the automotive market. Specific capabilities required for automotive applications were reviewed, along with a discussion of how these technologies can be embedded in ECUs in the vehicle, such as telematics, ADAS, gateway, control units, powertrain, V2X, and infotainment. Compliance with associated standards was also discussed.

After that, Brice discussed the Securyzr integrated Security Services Platform, describing how to implement secure device fleet management via the cloud.  The demonstration he provided illustrates the hardware and software required and how the interfaces and monitors are set up. How new devices are provisioned was also shown, as well as checking devices for overall health and managing exceptions.

Our discussion ended with an overview of the PQC Evaluation Kit. This product focuses on implementation of security in the Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) era. New algorithms to fortify security against quantum computing capabilities has been defined by the NIST and NSA. The evaluation kit contains the hardware and software required to prototype and test the new NSA algorithms against target system implementations. An important step toward making systems robust in the PQC era.

Brice concluded our discussion by commenting, “From fortifying automotive ECUs to managing device fleets securely in the cloud, Secure-IC’s Securyzr solutions can safeguard devices and networks against emerging threats and vulnerabilities.”

Laboryzr

Valentin Peltier is a Cryptography Engineer at Secure-IC. He has been with the company for over 10 years. His focus for our discission was Laboryzr. Valentin began by discussing how Secure-IC helps its customers verify the robustness of systems with essentially a security evaluation laboratory.  He explained that while cryptographic algorithms are claimed mathematically impossible to attack, the implementation of those algorithms in a physical chip can open up the system to multiple threats, such as side-channel analysis, fault injection attacks, or hardware trojans injected during manufacturing.

First, he described how Laboryzr delivers hardware and software capabilities to analyze the robustness of hardware as it is designed and after it is manufactured. There are also tools to analyze the software that runs on the system, creating a complete view, right down to the line of code that may be causing a problem.

Digging a bit deeper, he discussed the Analyzr™ SCA for Reverse Engineering (SCARE). Here, methods of using side channel analysis to reverse engineer the target system (the memorable acronym SCARE) are used with a particular focus on the robustness of the all-important AES encryption. He detailed the hardware and software technology used to implement target system evaluation, including some unique sensor probes developed by Secure-IC.

Valentin concluded with a review of side-channel analysis on smartphone devices. Here, he presented the details of how to use side channel analysis on a cell phone to examine the robustness of the RSA algorithm. An electromagnetic probe is used to gain access to internal operations on the cell phone. The resultant data then goes through extensive analysis. The adage “you can run, but you can’t hide” came to mind during this part of our discussion.

Valentin concluded our discussion by commenting, “With Laboryzr, we offer a comprehensive solution for evaluating hardware and software security, providing our customers with insights from chip design to post-manufacturing analysis.”

To Learn More

My discussions with Brice and Valentin were quite useful and eye-opening. If security is on your mind, you can also reach out to Secure-IC to discuss your requirements here. And that’s how Secure-IC is making the cyber world a safer place.