SafeNet Announces New Multi-Gigabit Security IP Cores for System on Chip Designs

SafeNet, Inc. (NASDAQ: SFNT), setting the standard for information security, today announced the availability of new silicon IP cores that deliver the advanced levels of security mandated by new industry standards and market requirements for improved protection of data at rest and data in transit. With the new SafeXcel IP cores, System on Chip (SoC) vendors can now build processors that support the cryptographic algorithms LRW-AES, AES-GCM, SHA-384 and SHA-512, allowing semiconductor vendors to build robust high-performance security into next-generation SoCs.

"With the addition of popular high-speed security algorithms to our award-winning security IP portfolio, SafeNet solidifies its leadership position providing the best silicon-proven security IP for SoC vendors," said Henk Pruim, vice president and general manager of SafeNet's OEM Networking Division. "Most important to our IP customers is that SafeNet delivers complete hardware and software security systems, not just the hardware IP, to reduce project risk. With our solutions, semiconductor OEMs are able to offer a complete high-value security solution to their clients."

High-speed Encryption to Protect Data at Rest and Data in Transit
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) provides security and ensures that data is kept confidential while at rest, for example on a hard drive, and during transit from one computer to another. AES ciphers are also used to ensure the data origin is coming from the intended source. To address the market demand for integrated high-speed AES crypto solutions, SafeXcel IP AES/GCM/LRW implements the new LRW-AES and AES-GCM algorithms in one single product, together with the widely-used AES feedback modes ECB, CBC, CTR, CFB, and OFB. SafeXcel IP AES/GCM/LRW supports 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit keys for maximum protection and design flexibility.

Driven by the increasing need for high-speed protection of stored data, the LRW-AES cipher is being proposed for the IEEE standard P1619 to enable robust hard disk and tape encryption, among other applications. In addition to LRW-AES, SafeXcel IP AES/GCM/LRW also includes the AES-GCM cipher, which has been designed to provide robust confidentiality and data origin authentication. By allowing a parallelizable authentication implementation, AES-GCM can be used for transmission protocols that require ultra high-speed authenticated encryption, such as protecting information at the data link layer using IEEE 802.1AE security for Ethernet networks, or at the network layer in IPsec ESP. SafeXcel IP configurations that support AES-GCM authenticated encryption with a throughput of 4, 8, 21 and 42 Gbps are available.

Ensuring Integrity of Data
Protecting the integrity of data ensures that information has not been tampered with during transit from one computer or network element to another. SHA is a popular algorithm for that purpose. The second addition to SafeNet’s SafeXcel IP product line is a new version of SafeXcel IP MD5/SHA Accelerators, which offers any combination of the secure hashing algorithms MD5, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512. With SHA-384 and SHA-512, even higher levels of hash security are now offered for applications such as digital signatures, online transactions and public key infrastructures. Various configurations of SHA IP cores are available from SafeNet, with throughputs up to 3.5 Gbps.

SafeXcel IP offers the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of proven semiconductor security IP designs. All SafeXcel IP solutions are available in various configurations to meet specific SoC throughput, power, and gate count goals. For more information about SafeNet’s award-winning SafeXcel IP and QuickSec security software, please visit www.safenet-inc.com/SafeXcel-IP.

SafeNet will be exhibiting at the Embedded System Conference in San Jose, April 4-6 2006, at booth # 3215. The company will be showcasing, for the first time, a complete hardware/software system performance demo of the SafeXcel-5160 - the best priced high-speed security processor in the industry.

About SafeNet, Inc.
SafeNet is a global leader in information security. Founded more than 20 years ago, the company provides complete security utilizing its encryption technologies to protect communications, intellectual property and digital identities, and offers a full spectrum of products including hardware, software, and chips. UBS, Nokia, Fujitsu, Hitachi, ARM, Bank of America, NetGear, the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, Adobe, Samsung, Texas Instruments, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and scores of other customers entrust their security needs to SafeNet. For more information, visit www.safenet-inc.com.