San Francisco, CA April 18, 2011 — Mocana, a company that focuses on the security of non-PC devices, and CPU Tech, a leader in trusted and secure processing solutions, today announced that they have partnered to deliver a new, more secure generation of the best-selling Acalis SentryTM product line.
Nowhere is device security and mobile security more crucial than in Defense applications. The mission-critical requirements of defense settings demand a fully-integrated security architecture, built from the ground up. The Acalis Sentry software/hardware combination encrypts embedded software and manages internal security settings for CPU Tech’s Acalis® CPU872, the first commercially available trusted embedded processor that addresses the anti-tampering and embedded security requirements of military and commercial systems, as defined by U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Instruction 5200.39.
CPU Tech needed a system to authenticate connections between the client and Acalis Sentry Server, as well as issue and authenticate self-signed X.509 certificates. And because their product applications include secured embedded systems, it needed to be optimized for resource-constrained environments.
They chose Mocana’s NanoSSL and NanoCrypto solutions, both part of Mocana’s Device Security Framework™. Mocana’s super fast, super small SSL/TLS solution was specifically designed to speed projects like CPU Tech’s while providing best-in-class security services for performance-critical environments. NanoSSL is open-standards based, extensible, configurable, easy to integrate, extremely small footprint and platform-agnostic. And the crypto core at the heart of NanoSSL is government-certified FIPS 140-2 level-1-validated — crucial to CPU Tech’s solution.
Meanwhile, NanoCrypto’s low host-CPU utilization extends battery life on handheld devices and remote sensors, while enabling even low-end processors to use robust cryptographic techniques to protect sensitive information and authenticate users, systems and data. The NanoCrypto package is written entirely in C, is highly portable and has been tested on over 2,500 OS and processor combinations. NanoCrypto enables CPU Tech’s sophisticated developers to work directly with cryptographic primitives to build confidentiality, integrity and authentication features directly into the Acalis Sentry product line. Acalis Sentry uses NanoCrypto’s RSA authentication between itself and its Web-2.0 client application to ensure the integrity of the security settings configured through the client actually is programmed into the device. NanoCrypto’s AES capability enables Acalis Sentry to dynamically protect its ‘data at rest’ stored in external memory, greatly expanding the application’s capability to manage its data.
CPU Tech found that NanoSSL was actually going to be less expensive for them than OpenSSL, when engineering, testing and support costs were factored in — and initial evaluations showed that OpenSSL would not be able to meet CPU Tech’s stringent performance and footprint requirements and long-term maintenance of FIPS certification. Another reason for CPU Tech’s selection was Mocana’s guarantee that neither NanoSSL nor NanoCrypto contained any GPL code, so CPU Tech could be confident that their intellectual property wouldn’t accidentally become public domain because of “GPL contamination.” This “Trusted Source” software is a key value proposition for Defense customers.
Mocana CEO Adrian Turner said, “Our customer CPU Tech is at the forefront of the emergence of the Internet of Things. The Internet isn’t a network of computers anymore – devices actually outnumber PCs by at least five to one. But traditional security models were all built around the assumption that PCs were the nodes on the network that needed protection. The network has evolved, and old security models don’t work well anymore. Security needs to evolve, too, and CPU Tech gets that.
CPU Tech’s CEO Clay Johnson added “In order to provide our customers a secure embedded platform as well as a secure development environment, CPU Tech leverages software security elements from companies like Mocana. Focusing on our respective domain expertise offers our customers better end security.”
For more information about the state of security of non-PC devices, Mocana’s Spring 2011 Device Security Report is now available for download at www.mocana.com/spring2011/.
About CPU Technology
CPU Tech produces the Acalis® Family of Secure Processors. Designed with a secure methodology and fabricated at the IBM Trusted Foundry, the Acalis CPU872 offers the strongest protection available for software and systems. Threats to software and systems begin with reverse engineering, which enables cloning, malicious insertion and development of countermeasures. Acalis protects not only on-chip software but entire systems against tampering or reverse engineering. CPU Tech is a privately held company founded in 1989 with headquarters in Pleasanton, CA. Acalis® is a registered trademark of CPU Technology, Inc. and Acalis
About Mocana
Mocana is developing the industry’s only device-independent Smart Device Security Platform that secures all aspects of IP addressable devices as well as the information, applications and services that run on them. Mocana’s solutions dramatically increase confidence, trust and compliance among OEMs, service providers and their customers. Every day, millions of people use products sold by over 150 companies that leverage Mocana’s Device Security solutions, including Cisco, Honeywell, Dell, General Electric, General Dynamics, Avaya and Harris, among others. Recently, Mocana won Frost & Sullivan’s Technology Innovation of the Year award for Device Security, and was named to the Red Herring “GLOBAL 100” as one of the top 100 privately-held technology companies in the world.