Texas Instruments (TI) will use Certicom’s elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) technology to improve security as a part of the TI RF360 smart integrated circuit platform for government-issued electronic identification (e-ID) documents.
Combining Certicom’s crypto engine with our FRAM memory and MSP430 processor core enables TI’s new platform for government-issued IDs to operate at a significantly higher performance level with respect to speed and security, said Julie England, vice president at Texas Instruments.
This licensing will also enable TI to ensure compliance with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) SP800-78 key management requirements for FIPS 201 Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards as well as with international e-passport requirements.
Cryptographic algorithms are changing. With NIST’s requirement to cease using RSA-1024 after the year 2008 for PIV key management, TI is demonstrating security leadership by offering an e-ID platform with 256-bit ECC that is as strong as RSA with 3,072 bits, said Bill Lattin , chief technology officer at Certicom.
Certicom also provides Suite B based solutions to meet the compliance established by national security agency’s cryptographic modernization program through agreement algorithms to protect both sensitive and classified data.
Certicom has been licensing its security solutions to various companies. On November 9, 2007 Bally Technologies licensed Certicom’s Game Guardian SBG to enable authenticated connections between applications, gaming machines and backend servers.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
