LONDON, -- Cryptography Research, Inc. has been conferred the Frost & Sullivan "2009 World Smart Card Technology Leadership of the Year Award," for its outstanding overall performance including excellence in technology innovation, business development, formulation of a competitive strategy, and industry adoption rates.
"Cryptography Research has pioneered efforts in the field of Differential Power Analysis (DPA) research and continues being a leader in the smart cards space," notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Shyam Krishnan. "The company has a panoramic view of the entire value chain and continues to deliver effective and timely technology solutions that benefit end users and industry stakeholders alike."
The company discovered differential power analysis (DPA) in the late 1990s, working closely with industry leaders to implement countermeasures to the vulnerability. The company developed and owns a dominant Intellectual Property (IP) position for DPA countermeasures.
The discovery of DPA is of vital significance not only to the smart card industry, but also to all tamper resistance chips. It is relevant for all applications in the smart card industry such as pay TV, payment, Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), and identification. DPA is also significant in other industries such as defence.
DPA already plays a critical role in the market, and any chip or card that does not have a DPA countermeasure is fundamentally insecure. So, all vendors utilise DPA countermeasures of varying degrees.
"The impact of DPA countermeasures in the smart card industry is considerable and it is believed that any deployment without DPA countermeasures is highly insecure," remarks Krishnan. "It has also been argued that the vulnerability could have been the end for the smart card industry. Hence, finding this vulnerability and a means to counter it is very significant."
The discovery of DPA laid the foundation for an entire class of security research called Side Channel Analysis. DPA remains the most powerful, adaptive, and inexpensive of these attacks and thus, it is the primary concern of security designers.
"Cryptography Research is licensing its DPA countermeasure technology for cryptographic device manufacturers, smart card vendors, and any other manufacturer that is looking to produce secure DPA resistance products," states Krishnan. "The licensing program provides access to Cryptography Research's rich portfolio of broad patents on the technology that can reduce fraud and privacy by removing DPA attacks."
Cryptography Research is looking to deepen its commercial penetration with semiconductor manufacturers, smart card vendors, and issuers. The company understands that a license to one part of the value chain allows the entire supply chain to benefit. Within the last year, five of the top six smart card semiconductor manufacturers - Atmel, Infineon, NXP, Renesas, and Samsung - became licensing clients, Cryptography Research successfully settled its lawsuit with Visa, Inc., and MasterCard began requiring that its suppliers be licensed under Cryptography Research's patent portfolio. This year more than 4 billion security chips will be made with DPA countermeasures licensed by Cryptography Research, making Cryptography Research one of the highest-volume and highest-value technology licensors in the semiconductor industry.
The Frost & Sullivan Technology Leadership of the Year Award is bestowed each year upon the company that has demonstrated excellence in technology leadership within its industry. The recipient company has demonstrated technology leadership by excelling in all stages of the technology life cycle--incubation, adaptation, take-up, and maturity--to ensure a continuous flow of improvements. By innovating leading-edge concepts, the company has pioneered client applications.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
About Cryptography Research
Cryptography Research, Inc. develops and licenses technology to solve complex security problems. In addition to security evaluation and applied engineering work, the company is actively involved in long-term research and technology licensing in areas including content protection, tamper resistance, network security and financial services. Security systems designed by Cryptography Research engineers protect more than $100 billion of commerce annually for wireless, telecommunications, financial, entertainment, digital television and Internet industries. For additional information, please visit www.cryptography.com.
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