Infineon Technologies as a longstanding market and innovation leader in the secure chip card controller arena introduced a new digital security technology Integrity Guard that overcomes the restrictions of incumbent sensor based security concepts that dominated the market for decades.

Integrity Guard is a security technology that has been inspired by the information storage and information processing of a living cell. The technical realisation of this innovation equip controller with robust digital mechanismus to protect secret data and to monitor  the security conditions. Utilizing the "Integrity Guard", the controller reacts autonomously on security threats. At the core of this self checking design is a double CPU that performs a continuous self-check of all operations. Another key elements of "Integrity Guard" is the comprehensive encryption over the whole data path, leaving no plaintext on the chip. "Integrity Guard" encryption goes much further than conventional concepts and for the first time in chip card history even calculates with encrypted numbers in the CPU itself.

Integrity Guard combines several highly sophisticated digital security mechanismus that, in combination, cover whole classes of potential attacks. This is in contrast to incumbent systems that maintain more than a hundred of dedicated countermeasures against specific attacks, including continuos maintenance effort.

The main unique features of Integrity Guard are:

• fully encrypted data path leaving no plaintext on the chip - incl. calculation with encrypted numbers in the CPU itself
• comprehensive digital error detection over the complete data path
• self-checking dual CPUs

Integrity Guard achieves many goals at a time: Digital security measures can be mathematically simulated, enabling new design and test methods that lead to thorough security systems. Digital security measures show a stable and robust behaviour while the products are in the field, avoiding potential false reactions of outdated sensor based systems.

Infineon´s new generation security technology was developed for applications that require particulary high-level data security and resilience for a particularly long term of life. Important fields of application for security chips with Integrity Guard are governmental indentity cards or banking and credit cards. In this area, Integrity Guard already today sets the technological standard for chip-based security. Security controllers are also used increasingly in numerous network systems such as computers, IT infrastructures, industrial control systems and critical infrastructure systems setting new standards for overall system security.

Integrity Guard puts forward indispensible hardware security features that cannot be implemented effectively in software and gives software providers an efficient environment for truly secure, performant and feature rich applications.

Integrity Guard for the first time allowed designing a controller that achieves the following objectives for a secure device:

• R & D efficiency for application development
• Short time to market for end customer products
• Robustness, quality and long product life spans
• Open architecture to accommodate future hardware extensions

Integrity Guard security is available in Infineon´s SLE 78 controller family.

The “Deutscher Zukunftspreis” is awarded to outstanding technical and scientific innovations from Germany that show particular market potential.

Four teams were nominated from a total of 24 technology projects. A jury of independent experts from science and business selects the nominees and the winner. Nomination alone is regarded as the highest commendation for technology and innovation in Germany.

More information

Infineon´s Integrity Guard digital security technology has been elected as the winner of German´s Industry Innovation Award 2010, a high rank competition covering the whole spectrum of innovations amongst all Industries. This award gives unbiased evidence on the ground breaking dimension of Integrity Guard, even in a competition beyond the borders of the semiconductor and security industry.

Infineon´s Integrity Guard digital security technology was the winner of the 2008 Sesame Award in the category of Best Hardware. For more than a decade, the Sesames Awards honors, outstanding innovations and application achievements within the chip card industry and is regarded as global standards for the Chip Card and Security industry. Infineon received Award for the SLE 78 security micrcontroller family because of the innovative Integrity Guard Security Technology incorporated in this product.

Integrity Guard digital security technology is already deployed in important projects worldwide, e.g.:

German national electronic ID card

German national electronic healthcare card

"Girogo" project, Europe´s biggest contactless payment trial

Malaysia´s National Identity Card "MyKad"