Dr. Bill Anderson
Vice President of Encryption Products
SafeNet, Inc.
Support for cryptographic security
has become a basic requirement for many networking and mobile silicon
devices. The complex nature of cryptographic security processing often
creates a challenge for semiconductor designers to achieve the levels
of protection and throughput required by today's systems and applications.
Implementing security functionality on dedicated hardware enables designers
to achieve higher throughput performance, lower power consumption, and
a higher degree of security over software-based implementations running
on a general-purpose processor.
Security IP enables chip manufacturers
to benefit from re-using semiconductor designs for new applications-designs
that have been optimized and proven in previous security processor implementations.
IP security solutions deliver the
advanced levels of security mandated by new industry standards and market
requirements for improved protection of networking and communication
systems. Security IP comes in many flavors and configurations, from
simple cipher cores that accelerate only specific crypto algorithms,
such as AES or 3DES, to highly integrated security systems that can
handle the complete processing of security protocols, such as IPSec,
SSL, or pattern matching.
Key reasons why semiconductor manufacturers select silicon IP designs
Security is extremely
difficult and time-consuming to design in-house.
Leveraging existing know-how
reduces the need for full-blown security engineering team on staff.
Proven, innovative, best-in-class
security solutions that have been integrated numerous times significantly
reduce the risk for costly errors (such as recalling a chip after final
production) and guarantee standards compliance.
Integrating silicon-proven
IP significantly shortens design, testing, and integration cycles.
Proven quality leads
to better security designs as best-in-class IP has been continuously
optimized for various design requirements (such as gate count, performance,
and features).
Chip vendors avoid patent
issues with owners of security algorithm patents.
Even with the multiple commercial options available to system designers,
the process of selection and implementation remains a daunting one. Here are a
few simple guidelines to help you through your next security design:
Know Your Risks.
Find out what risks are realistic for your system, and decide up front
what you care about protecting. For example, if you're putting VPN
acceleration hardware into your communications processor you need to
think about where crypto keys are stored when they're at rest. If
the keys are sitting on the system disk unencrypted, is it possible
for an attacker to gain access to them? This is a realistic risk you
should consider protecting against. On the other hand, are you worrying
about organized crime funding massive research in advanced quantum cryptanalysis
technology? If so, you need to put down that triple espresso, take a
deep breath, and relax. There's a tiny possibility of quantum crypto
doing practical work some day, but we're a long way from thinking
about it as a risk.
Don't Under-Design.
Your brand new, cutting-edge, super-fast, streamlined SoC is going to
be in production for at least five years, and, unfortunately, that means
it's going to get old. Don't let the security feature be the first
critical organ to fail and put your product out of commission. When
you're deciding which security features to put in your next chip,
you must look at what security systems are doing one level up in your
food chain today. Your customers are going to look to you to provide
those same features in silicon. If you look at what is in your competitors'
chips, already you are looking at history.
Don't Over-Design.
Conversely, you still have a gatecount to consider, and cryptography
algorithms are notoriously heavy users of gates. It's the nature of
crypto that it performs a huge number of mathematical operations very
quickly to lock your data for transit from Toledo to Tokyo. Security
seems like a dark art, so there is a tendency to believe when someone
tells you they need a certain performance point. Check deeper-look
at the use cases, ask about software support, CPU load, buffer sizes,
overhead, network bandwidth and so on before determining how fast you
really need to go into the security core.
Think System, Not
Feature. The most common mistake in security system implementations
comes from forgetting to think like the bad guys. This is one area where
the security IP vendors have significant value to offer their customers.
The bad guys are smart. They don't bother attacking crypto algorithms
head-on. Instead, the bad guys look for ways around the security, cracks
in the armor that the system designers didn't think about, or maybe
knew about but considered to be someone else's implementation problem.
For example, security systems always rely on a good source of randomness
- what is your system's source? Is it possible to force it to a
known state by a reset or fault condition? If it is possible, then the
bad guys will probably do it.
Protect Those Keys.
You and your customers will sleep a lot better at night if you design
a secure key storage mechanism into your architecture from the beginning
for handling those critical secrets. You and your team are spending
time and money to put security into your next silicon products and the
security is only as good as the secrecy of the keys. Think about the
lifecycle of your chip. How it is created, and initialized? How does
it handle keys throughout their life, and, finally, how does it destroy
them when they're no longer needed? Although it seems simple, the
security lifecycle is the most important consideration for a successful
security system, and one area where it pays to have expert advice.
Bill Anderson is the
Vice President of Encryption Products
at SafeNet, Inc., where he manages SafeNet's
encryption product line, which includes
high-speed encryption appliances, data-at-rest security solutions,
and OEM security solutions sold as
intellectual property, chips, and software to OEMs, such as Cisco, Texas
Instruments, AMD, AMCC, and Samsung.
Dr. Anderson has Bachelors and Doctorate degrees in Electrical Engineering,
with specialization in cryptography, from the University of Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada.
