GSA and the HIS Initiative publish results of survey on hardware intrinsic security in semiconductor industry

SAN JOSE, USA: The Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA), an organization focused on accelerating the growth of the global semiconductor industry, and the HIS Initiative, a forum for educational activities regarding a new hardware security approach known as hardware intrinsic security (HIS), jointly announced the completion of a global study focused on secret key storage.

Approximately 60 semiconductor company personnel involved in the design of integrated circuits responded to the HIS Usage Survey about their needs and perceptions of secret key storage and HIS.

A summary of the results includes:

* The awareness of secret key storage techniques is low while awareness of counterfeiting is high. Fifty eight percent of participants believe 10 percent of high-tech products sold globally is counterfeit.
* The need for secret key storage in the semiconductor industry is strong, with 48 percent of survey participants indicating it is a feature or requirement today and 47 percent indicating they need secret key storage in the next year.
* There is a significant interest in HIS, with 86 percent of participants indicating they are interested in learning more about, evaluating or using HIS, particularly if HIS can eliminate the need for non-volatile memory (NVM) when used for other key storage solutions.
* The market needs to be educated on available solutions and their reliability and cost. Prior to taking the survey, 73 percent of respondents did not know that HIS was a solution for secret key storage.

“We are pleased to field such a comprehensive study to gauge the perceptions of implementing secret key storage solutions to prevent counterfeiting among fabless companies,” said GSA President Jodi Shelton. “Collaborating on this study with the HIS Initiative provides us with a platform from which we can determine industry education for the global community on potential solutions and benefits.”

“The results of the study show that there is an interest in HIS in a number of important markets beyond smart cards and military/aerospace, such as networking, telecom and industrial,” noted Pim Tuyls, CEO of Intrinsic-ID, sponsor of the HIS Initiative. “Respondents indicate that beyond secure key storage one of the main reasons they’re interested in hardware security is for unique identification of a specific device, which is something that HIS uniquely provides.”