nCipher and Broadcom to Provide Advanced, Embedded Security Infrastructure
Las Vegas, Nevada – Networld+Interop 2004 — May 11, 2004 — nCipher plc (LSE: NCH), a leading provider of IT cryptographic security, today announced that it is collaborating with Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM) to improve the way security is deployed and managed in consumer and business devices such as laptop computers and network equipment. As an extension to its established strategic partnership with Broadcom, nCipher will provide security management products to support Broadcom’s BroadSAFETM security initiative which embeds strong identity and encryption capabilities within a wide range of Broadcom’s networking semiconductor product lines including IP phones, Gigabit Ethernet controllers, network switches, broadband and security processors (see separate Broadcom press release today).
In addressing both client security and management infrastructure together, Broadcom and nCipher’s joint solution will build trust across large scale networks by dramatically reducing the threat of direct attack to isolated and inherently unprotected devices. This approach removes the need for expensive client security add-ons such as USB tokens or smart cards, and will significantly reduce administration costs through the automation of many tasks associated with security provisioning and management. As a result, for the first time the potential exists for tamper-resistant security to become a ubiquitous component of even the most commoditized devices.
The jointly-engineered solution has two fundamental goals:
To enable highly cost sensitive equipment such as telephones, laptop computers and networking devices to securely prove their own integrity, manage user identities and ensure confidentiality, enforcing unified security policies in an auditable way.
To establish a security management infrastructure that coordinates and automates the installation, enrolment, provisioning and future deactivation of distributed client devices to enable roaming users and device mobility, emergency recovery and network reconfiguration.
These goals will be achieved through the combination of Broadcom’s BroadSAFE enabled semiconductor components and new security management products from nCipher that will build upon the company’s highly scalable “Security World’ key management framework and range of hardware security products that has been independently validated to the Federal Information Processing Standard FIPS 140-2.
“Broadcom is uniquely placed to address the growing need for improved security in mainstream broadband equipment right out to the edge of the network, but as we all know, effective security is rarely provided by a point solution,” said Dr. Ford Tamer, Group Vice President, Networking Infrastructure Group, at Broadcom. “nCipher and Broadcom have defined an end-to-end approach that leverages the powerful capabilities of nCipher’s industry proven and FIPS validated key management technology and this provides the perfect complement to our BroadSAFE strategy. We are excited by this important evolution of our long-standing partnership with nCipher.”
“The successful deployment of new security approaches such as digital rights management, strong authentication and secure internal communications relies on a coordinated approach to client security in order to achieve scalability and avoid spiraling administration costs,” said Alex van Someren, president and chief executive at nCipher. “By licensing important enabling technology to Broadcom as part of their BroadSAFE program and by joining the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), nCipher has made a strong commitment to delivering a solution that enables the kind of hardware-based cryptographic security on client devices and consumer products that has traditionally only been deployed on high-end servers and mainframes.”
nCipher’s future security management products will be available in various configurations to suit a range of both embedded and standalone applications, further details will be released in due course.
About nCipher
nCipher is redefining cryptographic security to protect points of risk across the enterprise – from network appliances to Web servers, to custom software applications and back-end databases. nCipher provides hardware and software solutions that enable organizations to implement best practice security by addressing the challenges of cryptographic key management and performance. Many of the world’s leading organizations – from Microsoft and Barclays Bank to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the U.S. Navy – rely on nCipher to deliver a sound e-security infrastructure. nCipher’s products are particularly well suited to organizations with high volumes of security-sensitive transactions, such as banking and financial institutions, government departments, e-retailers and online service providers. nCipher is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE:NCH) and is a member of the FTSE TechMARK and FTSE4Good indices with offices in Cambridge, UK; Boston, Seattle, Hamburg and Tokyo. For more information on nCipher, visit www.ncipher.com