Secure authentication ICs help reduce development time and minimise design costs

Secure key provisioning is crucial to protect sensitive keys against third-party tampering and malicious attacks. For securing consumer, industrial, data centre and medical applications, secure key storage is essential, but developing and documenting secure key provisioning can be complex and costly. To lower the barrier of entry into secure key provisioning and enable more rapid prototyping, Microchip Technology has added the ECC204, SHA104 and SHA105 CryptoAuthentication ICs to its TrustFLEX portfolio of devices, services and tools.

The ICs are hardware-based, secure storage devices designed to keep secret keys hidden from unauthorised attacks. As part of the TrustFLEX platform, ECC204, SHA104, and SHA105 ICs are preconfigured with defined use cases, customisable cryptographic keys, and code examples to streamline the development process.

"Adding the ECC20x and SHA10x preconfigured devices to our TrustFLEX platform will facilitate leveraging Microchip's secure provisioning services for a broader set of applications," Nuri Dagdeviren, corporate vice president of Microchip's secure computing group. "With this platform expansion, Microchip is continuing to strengthen its portfolio, making security authentication ICs more accessible and more specifically optimised for high-volume, cost-sensitive applications."

The devices meet Common Criteria JIL High-rated secure key storage requirements and have been certified by the NIST Entropy Source Validation (ESV) and Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program (CAVP) in compliance with the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). The secure IC families are developed to implement trusted authentication to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of data and communications in various systems and applications.

The company's CryptoAuthentication ICs are small, low-power devices designed to be compatible with any MPUs or MCUs. They provide flexible solutions for securing industrial and medical devices, battery-powered equipment, and disposable applications. The ECC204 is also a WPC-approved Qi authentication SSS.

The ICs are supported by the company's Trust Platform Design Suite, which supplies code examples and learning materials and allows the secure transfer of credentials to leverage its secure key provisioning services more easily. The devices are also supported by the MPLAB X IDE, product-specific evaluation boards and CryptoAuthLib library support.