Barco Silex Partners with Rambus to Combat Security Threats in Point-of-Sale Market

Enables expansion of DPA Countermeasure solutions beyond traditional smartcard market

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. , Apr. 06, 2015 – 

Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ:RMBS) today announced that its Cryptography Research Division has entered into a partnership agreement with Barco Silex. Through this agreement, Barco Silex can develop DPA-resistant solutions that help accelerate time-to-market of security-based products. Barco Silex will utilize Cryptography Research differential power analysis, or DPA, countermeasure technology to help protect against security risks in a variety of point-of-sale applications, including banking, retailing, mass transit, and wireless telecommunications.

"Side-channel attacks are becoming more prevalent, and we need a sound solution to combat this growing risk to ensure customer confidence and protect high value assets," said Sébastien Rabou, Product Manager at Barco Silex. "The partnership with Rambus allows us to have access to the world-class cryptography engineers while developing solutions to benefit the point-of-sale market."

"The risk of security breaches continues to explode and customers need to quickly get secure solutions into the market," said Dr. Simon Blake-Wilson, vice president of Products and Marketing of the Rambus Cryptography Research division. "By partnering with Barco Silex, we have created another channel that will accelerate time-to-market with advanced security technology."

Concerns about DPA security attacks originated in the smartcard market; however, the potential for these attacks is spreading into many other markets. For this reason, there is a need for DPA countermeasures to be adopted across all markets where valuable financial and personal data is being handled. Today, products commonly at risk include point-of-sale devices, mobile phones, secure USB flash drives, pay television set-top boxes, and optical disc players among others.

DPA is a type of side-channel attack that involves monitoring variations in the electrical power consumption or EM emissions from a target device. These measurements can then be used to derive cryptographic keys and other sensitive information from chips. Rambus Cryptography Research DPA countermeasure technologies are a proven solution for protecting devices against the extraction of cryptographic keys and private data through side-channel attacks. Highly flexible, these solutions can be optimized for performance, size and security level, allowing customers to help fend off unauthorized access to critical information. Having discovered side-channel attacks, Cryptography Research scientists have developed a comprehensive portfolio of application-specific hardware core and software library solutions that chipmakers can use to build DPA resistant products. These DPA resistant solutions can be integrated into a wide range of SoCs, including power-sensitive mobile applications, highly secure anti-tampering and performance-driven multi-core processors.

Barco Silex has joined the Rambus Partner Program, which will enable further collaboration on other combined IP blocks offerings between the two companies. For additional information on the Rambus Partner Program, visit www.rambus.com/partners.

About Cryptography Research

The Rambus Cryptography Research division specializes in embedded security solutions to combat the worldwide threat to data integrity, our innovative technologies span areas including tamper resistance, content protection, network security, media and payment and transaction services. Eight billion security products are made annually with our security technology, and systems designed by our scientists and engineers protect hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues every year. Additional information is available at cryptography.com.

About Barco Silex

Barco Silex is a micro-electronic design house belonging to the Belgian Barco electronic group. Its offices are in Belgium close to capital Brussels and in France in the region of Aix-en Provence.

Barco Silex offers a complete portofolio of high-end design services, from traditional ASIC/FPGA design to advanced SOC/SOPC based system development ,IP integration or design, and board design in the field of :

• image processing,
• communications,
• consumer electronics
• industrial electronics.

We offer to customers partnerships with different selected ASIC, PLD vendors and IP providers, and integrate our expertise in your SoC design and SoPC .

Barco Silex customers include industry leaders and innovators in all areas of electronics, spread all over Europe and overseas.

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