Cortus and Secure-IC Team up to Secure Smart Cards

Secure-IC and Cortus combine threat protection and low power processor IP cores to enable the creation of silicon efficient card designs which maximize digital trust

Hong Kong -- March 19, 2014 - Cortus, a technology leader in low power 32-bit processor IP, and Secure-IC, the Trusted Computing Company, today announced that they are collaborating in providing low power secure solutions for smartcard developers.

Securing smartcards below the OS is necessary to provide cards with a high degree of tamper-resistance. By offering security solutions tailored to a particular customer’s requirements, a good trade-off can be made between the degree of protection and the cost in silicon. Digital hardware counter-measures deliver a high degree of protection against non-invasive attacks and cyber-threats and, unlike analog threat protection methods, are easily targeted to different silicon technologies.

“Secure-IC is extremely happy to work with Cortus on securing smart cards”, says Hassan Triqui, President and CEO of Secure-IC. He adds, “We plan to put our skills and intellectual property in security and cyber-proof components together with Cortus' low power processor technology in order to better serve our customers within a broad range of smartcard applications”.

“We are delighted to work with Secure-IC combining our complementary IP offerings”, says Michael Chapman, CEO and President of Cortus, “We have both worked with smart card companies through a partnership approach”. He adds, “Our collaboration should make it simpler to create differentiated secure products in the smart card field”.

Cortus is a technology leader in 32-bit processor IP delivering cores with small silicon footprints and low power consumption. Cortus IP has been foundational to a range of security applications including SIM cards, M2M controllers, PayTV cards, secure communication devices and secure execution environments. To date over 500 million devices have been manufactured containing Cortus processor cores.

Secure-IC is quickly becoming a thought leader in the creation of sustainable embedded technologies that strike the best balance between threat protection and product life-cycle pressures. Secure-IC delivers an advanced analysis platform and a broad range of IP cores to help its customers achieve the highest levels of security on any embedded system. Its technologies prevent hacking of any secure element, reverse engineering of any embedded system and theft of intellectual property. Secure-IC is a partner for maximizing digital trust.

About Cortus:
Cortus S.A.S. is a technology enabler for rapidly growing applications including Internet of Things (IoT), wearable electronic devices and smart sensors. It has specialised in 32-bit processor cores which can significantly reduce manufacturing costs while achieving computational performance and power constraints. Integrated circuits containing Cortus cores have been manufactured in high volumes for a wide range of applications including automotive, CMOS imaging, M2M controllers, secure microcontrollers, sensors, SIM cards, PayTV cards, smart metering and wireless. Cortus addresses the global market through offices in Europe, California and South Korea. http://www.cortus.com

About Secure-IC:
Secure-IC, the Trusted Computing Company, develops trusted computing security technologies for embedded systems to protect them from malevolent attacks and cyber threats. Working with top scientists in the field, we are thought leaders in the cyber security domain with best-of-breed technologies that assess the vulnerability of any embedded system and IP-cores that protect hardware products from state-of-the-art attacks. The company serves the market from three different locations; France for Europe, Singapore for Asia Pacific and the Silicon Valley for North America.
http://www.secure-ic.com