Infineon and SPYRUS Partnership Delivers First Products Incorporating New ''Suite B'' Advanced Crypto Algorithms; New Era in Cybersecurity Commences.SAN JOSE, Calif. -- SPYRUS, Inc. and Infineon Technologies today announced the availability of personal authentication and security products to support the Global Information Grid The globally interconnected, end-to-end set of information capabilities, associated processes and personnel for collecting,processing, storing, disseminating and managing information on demand to warfighters, policy makers, and support personnel. , utilizing the new suite of advanced crypto algorithms known as "Suite B." Suite B is expected to be the de facto standard Hardware or software that is widely used, but not endorsed by a standards organization. Contrast with de jure standard. de facto standard - A widespread consensus on a particular product or protocol which has not been ratified by any official standards body, such as ISO, to protect data for decades to come, for both government and business users. The Global Information Grid (GIG), as it is being defined by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), provides a fundamental shift away from centralized "information-push" technologies, toward a new era of information sharing by authorized users, anywhere, anytime. Building on the currently available Internet technologies, the GIG will provide to the U.S. DoD, its allies and coalition partners, a secure, highly available, and globally interconnected information environment to meet the real-time and near real-time information needs for security, military, diplomatic, and civil government purposes as well as for commercial enterprises. The National Security Agency (NSA NSA abbr. National Security Agency Noun 1. NSA - the United States cryptologic organization that coordinates and directs highly specialized activities to protect United States information systems and to produce foreign ) publicly announced in October 2003 its intent to adopt elliptic curve cryptography See ECC. (ECC (1) (Error-Correcting Code) A type of memory that corrects errors on the fly. See ECC memory. (2) (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) A public key cryptography method that provides fast decryption and digital signature processing. ), which forms the heart of the Suite B algorithms. SPYRUS received the first patent sublicense for elliptic curve cryptography that has been issued by the National Security Agency, under the terms of the NSA Field of Use patent license. The "Field of Use" refers to the technology and methods necessary to implement patented technology, utilizing elliptic curves in GF(p) with key strengths greater than 255-bits, with implementations that are certified to meet the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards) A series of publications issed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that specifies information security guidelines for federal government departments and agencies. 140-2 security standard. SPYRUS products implement ECC technology specified for use by the U.S. Government, and increasingly adopted by other governments as well as the commercial sector. SPYRUS products support the full range of ECC curves in GF(p) that have been approved for use by the U.S. Government, from P-256 to P-521. SPYRUS products also support the full range of SHA-224/256/384/512, and AES-128/192/256. The Full and One-Pass ECMQV key establishment schemes are supported, along with the five EC Diffie-Hellman schemes required by NIST's Special Publication SP 800-56. The full range of capabilities that might be selected for a particular application will therefore be available in a FIPS 140-2 certified SPYRUS product. Infineon and SPYRUS have been partners since the mid-1990s. Together they produced the first smart card and USB USB in full Universal Serial Bus Type of serial bus that allows peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, digitizers, data gloves, etc.) to be easily connected to a computer. cryptographic token certified to meet the FIPS 140-1 Level 2 and Level 3 security standards, for use in both Government and commercial business enterprises. This collaboration now provides the market with the first token to offer complete Suite B capabilities to provide the strongest security protection in smart card, USB token, and secure mass storage products available anywhere. It is being submitted for certification under the stringent FIPS 140-2 Level 3 cryptographic security standard by an agency of the U.S. Government (NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. ). The Infineon SLE SLE systemic lupus erythematosus. SLE abbr. systemic lupus erythematosus Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) 66CX642P chip is in the process of being certified under Common Criteria at an EAL5+ level of trust by the German Government. SPYRUS plans to migrate its security solution to Infineon's new PE family of secure microcontroller ICs to take advantage of enhanced features including more efficient EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM) A rewritable memory chip that holds its content without power. Although EEPROMs spawned flash memory, EEPROMs are byte addressable at the write level, whereas flash chips must erase a block of bytes before rewriting. programming, 33MHz CPU clock, and smaller die size. These technologies include Infineon's multi-layer chip design, which includes an active shield to prevent tampering, the Advanced Cryptographic Engine (ACE) as well as a Triple DES cryptographic coprocessor to accelerate RSA (1) (Rural Service Area) See MSA. (2) (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) A highly secure cryptography method by RSA Security, Inc., Bedford, MA (www.rsa.com), a division of EMC Corporation since 2006. It uses a two-part key. , ECC and DES computations, together with state-of-the-art techniques to defeat possible side-channel analysis attacks. These techniques include instruction timing randomization randomization (ranˈ·d SPYRUS technologies build upon that solid security base by utilizing their own intellectual property and algorithm implementations to add highly optimized support for ECC, AES, SHA-2, RSA, DSA, and other legacy algorithms running on their secure smart card operating system (SPYCOS(R)). "This partnership between Infineon and SPYRUS provides new, cost-effective opportunities for customers while offering best-in-class security features," said Joerg Borchert, VP for Chip Card and Security ICs, Infineon Technologies North America. "Combining Infineon's leading edge security microcontroller technology with SPYRUS' embedded technologies will provide customers with improved legacy performance together with Suite B product capabilities today and ultimately improve time to deployment for systems with maximum security protection." "SPYRUS is committed to providing products that meet the U.S. Government's highest standards to secure and protect sensitive information," said Sue Pontius, President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of SPYRUS. "With NSA's grant of the ECC license to SPYRUS, we are ready to meet the anticipated demand in all markets that require strong security. Combining Infineon's security IC expertise with our cryptographic implementation has enabled SPYRUS to be first to market with the most advanced products available today." About Infineon Technologies Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany, offers semiconductor and system solutions for automotive, industrial and multi-market sectors, for applications in communication, as well as memory products. With a global presence, Infineon operates in the U.S. from San Jose, CA, in the Asia-Pacific region from Singapore and in Japan from Tokyo. In fiscal year 2004 (ending September), the company achieved sales of Euro 7.19 billion (US $8.93 billion) with about 35,600 employees worldwide. Infineon is listed on the DAX index of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange Frankfurt Stock Exchange The largest of Germany's eight securities exchanges, operated by Deutsche Borse AS. and on the New York Stock Exchange New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) World's largest marketplace for securities. The exchange began as an informal meeting of 24 men in 1792 on what is now Wall Street in New York City. (ticker symbol: IFX). Further information is available at www.infineon.com. About SPYRUS, Inc. SPYRUS, Inc, is a privately held U.S. corporation headquartered in San Jose, California San Jose (IPA: /ˌsænhoʊˈzeɪ/) is the third-largest city in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States. It is the county seat of Santa Clara County. with offices in Canada, Belgium, and Australia. Since its inception in 1992, SPYRUS has specialized in cryptographic services utilizing high assurance devices to publish, distribute, and provide access control for electronic data. SPYRUS' mission is to set the standard for the new era of multinational information sharing and long term data protection. Further information is available at www.spyrus.com. Of note: Mr. Daniel G. Wolf, the National Security Agency's Director of Information Assurance, will speak at the 14th Annual RSA Conference on Wednesday, 16 February 2005, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California “San Francisco” redirects here. For other uses, see San Francisco (disambiguation). The City and County of San Francisco (EN IPA: [sænfrənˈsɪskoʊ] , where he is expected to discuss the importance of multinational information sharing and the Global Information Grid. According to the NSA press release, Mr. Wolf will be available for interviews by contacting the NSA Public and Media Affairs Office at 301-688-6524 or nsapao@nsa.gov. |
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