Industry Leaders to Fight Counterfeiting through Hardware Intrinsic Security Initiative

Organized counterfeiting is seriously affecting the profitability of the players throughout the electronic industry. Only a united force can help the industry overcome this challenge. Responding to this crucial need for uniting, the industry leaders came together to form Hardware Intrinsic Security, or "HIS," Initiative

Hardware Intrinsic Security has been established as an educational forum dedicated to reduce barriers and advance the adoption of HIS solutions.  The forum will work for developing a new approach to combat counterfeiting. Counterfeiting has become a serious threat driving down the average selling price, or "ASP," of genuine products and accounting for approximately 10 percent of electronics sales today. 

The HIS approach aims at providing greater security at a lower cost. To reduce the cost of security, HIS prescribes lower cost per chip. This will enable secure key storage without actually storing the key.

HIS technology promises to come up with a new level of hardware security utilizing the inherent uniqueness in each and every silicon chip. This approach allows a device to generate a secret key only when needed and power down with no key present.  Because no key is stored, attackers have nothing to find.

Intrinsic-ID has successfully completed a proof point validation of a Virage Logic 90-nm SRAM for use in a HIS solution.

The initiative plans to leverage the expertise of its members for developing an educational agenda with supporting deliverables. As the awareness spreads, it would help in reducing barriers to adoption of HIS solutions, the industry leaders hope.

The HIS Initiative members are comprised of advisors from the leading companies such as Cisco Systems (News - Alert), imec, Intrinsic-ID, Irdeto, NXP Semiconductors, SiVenture, TSMC and Virage Logic Corporation.

To effectively advance HIS technology adoption, the Initiative members represent a full spectrum of the ecosystem that include semiconductor, fabless, foundry, and intellectual property (IP) providers.  Intrinsic-ID serves as its managing sponsor. It will be relevant to mention here that Intrinsic-ID has recently entered into collaboration with NXP to raise the bar in chip security.

Security and authenticity are two factors that can make or break any electronic brand.  For the electronics companies it is important to assure that assets of companies and end-users are protected.  Counterfeiting on the other hand significantly reduces market size and damages brand reputation. 

"The launch of the HIS Initiative reinforces the high degree of importance our industry places on security and authentication. The HIS Initiative aligns thought leaders to reduce the barriers to HIS technology adoption by facilitating industry work and the development of proof points.  We welcome their contributions as we work together to make counterfeiting a thing of the past," said Daniel Schobben, CEO at Intrinsic-ID.

"GSA (News - Alert) is seeing a significant amount of interest in the various types of security solutions, but there is a decided lack of information and educational awareness about hardware security for chip designers.  The GSA has been working to help fill that gap and we welcome the Initiative's contributions to this effort," said Lisa Tafoya, vice president of Research for Global Semiconductor Alliance.