Microsemi Announces New Secured FPGA Production Programming Solution to Prevent Overbuilding, Cloning, Reverse Engineering, Malware Insertion and Other Security Threats

Industry-Leading Solution Offers Supply Chain Assurance and Controls Number of Devices Programmed

ALISO VIEJO, Calif. -- March 15, 2016 -- Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced the availability of its Secured Production Programming Solution (SPPS) for its field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The new solution securely generates and injects cryptographic keys and configuration bitstreams into Microsemi's FPGAs thus preventing cloning, reverse engineering, malware insertion, leakage of sensitive intellectual property (IP) such as trade secrets or classified data, overbuilding and other security threats.

Microsemi's SPPS includes the use of "customer" and "manufacturer" hardware security modules (HSMs) combined with Microsemi firmware, the company's new SPPS Job Manager software and state-of-the-art security protocols built into every Microsemi SmartFusion^™2 system-on-chip (SoC) FPGA and IGLOO^™2 FPGA. SPPS allows customers to automatically prevent today's major security threats by external adversaries or competitors, contract manufacturers and their employees, or other insiders. SPPS is an ideal solution for any FPGA-based system that may be at risk for overbuilding in a wide variety of applications in the communications, defense, industrial and automotive markets.

"Our proven SPPS flow enables end-to-end security and control throughout the manufacturing process, allowing customers to safely use less expensive manufacturing resources such as offshore contract manufacturers, while reducing security risks," said Bruce Weyer, vice president and business unit manager at Microsemi. "SPPS extends our FPGA security leadership position and has already been successfully adopted by tier 1 commercial and defense companies."

Protecting IP and Revenue
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that IP threats cost domestic companies more than $250 billion per year in lost revenues, as well as the loss of approximately 750,000 jobs. More than 55 million jobs in the U.S. are supported by IP-intensive industries.

"Microsemi's new SPPS offers industry-leading capabilities in the programmable logic market, and can potentially save millions of dollars in lost revenue and brand theft," said Shakeel Peera, senior director, SoC product marketing at Microsemi. "Offering the only FPGAs certified for DPA-resistant design security by an independent third-party laboratory, this product offering completes the supply chain assurance from wafer sort to customer-deployed systems, enabling our customers to trust that the systems they deploy are authentic and only the systems they wish to deploy."

Key security features of the SPPS include:

• Prevents overbuilding and cloning
• Provides a secure audit trail of devices programmed and programming content
• Provides counterfeit part detection
• Secured key management (generation/storage/use)
• Secure field-upgrade file generation

About Microsemi's Secured Production Programming Solution
The SPPS builds upon Microsemi's existing internal HSM manufacturing infrastructure, which uses certified HSMs for provisioning factory keys and certificates during wafer sort and package testing. Provisioning by Microsemi allows customers to securely program their unique key material and designs into the company's award-winning SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs and IGLOO2 FPGAs in untrusted locations around the world. HSMs effectively remove the vulnerability posed by insiders, especially those within manufacturing locations. This is all accomplished while maintaining confidentiality of sensitive data and preventing tampering, such as insertion of a Trojan horse.

Microsemi's SPPS Job Manager software generates a job file containing encrypted security parameters, authorized production device limit counts and an FPGA bitstream, allowing the user to monitor all aspects of the FPGA production job, including specifying the key management options desired and allowing them to assert positive control over the number of systems produced. This file is only readable by the target manufacturing HSM. The SPPS also generates encrypted files for the reconfiguration of FPGAs previously "keyed" by the user, such as those in fielded systems.

All security-sensitive operations including device authentication (to provide supply chain assurance), cryptographic key generation, bitstream encryption, the authorization and counting of produced systems, and the signing of audit logs are performed within the hardware security boundary of the FIPS140-2 level 3 certified Thales HSMs, rather than in a more vulnerable open Windows or Linux computer workstation. This provides the highest level of security in the FPGA industry for detecting counterfeit devices, protecting design IP and preventing overbuilding.

Product Availability
Microsemi's SPPS is available now. Microsemi is an official reseller of Thales' hardware security modules, which are custom programmed for executing Microsemi's FPGA design security protocols. For more information, visit http://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/design-resources/programming/spps or contact sales.support@microsemi.com.

About Microsemi's IGLOO2 FPGAs and SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs
Microsemi's IGLOO2 FPGAs and SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs deliver more resources in low density devices, with the lowest power, proven security and exceptional reliability. These devices are ideal for general purpose functions such as Gigabit Ethernet or dual PCI Express control planes, bridging functions, input/output (I/O) expansion and conversion, video/image processing, system management and secure connectivity. Microsemi FPGAs and SoC FPGAs are used by customers in communications, industrial, medical, defense and aviation markets. PCIe Gen 2 connectivity starts at just 10K logic elements (LEs). SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs offer a 166MHz ARM Cortex-M3 processor with up to 512KB of embedded flash and a complete peripheral set. IGLOO2 FPGAs offer a high performance memory subsystem with up to 512KB embedded flash, 2 x 32 KB embedded static random-access memory (SRAM), two direct memory access (DMA) engines and two double date rate (DDR) controllers. Microsemi also offers a broad range of military, automotive and space grade FPGAs and SoC FPGAs. For more information visit: http://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/soc-fpga/smartfusion2 and http://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/fpga/igloo2-fpga.

Microsemi's SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs and IGLOO2 FPGAs have been granted certification for seven protocols used in design security under the CRI DPA Countermeasure Validation Program developed by Rambus Cryptography Research Division.

About Microsemi's Defense and Security Product Portfolio
Microsemi is a provider of defense and security products and services, including secure FPGAs and SoCs, secure solid state drives (SSDs), security software, anti-tamper solutions, FIPS-197 certified 1 Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet PHYs with AES-256 MACsec support (IEEE 802.1AEbw-2013). Microsemi security services include risk assessment, protection planning, red teaming, blue teaming, security engineering and side channel analysis and mitigation. For more information about Microsemi's portfolio for defense applications, visit http://www.microsemi.com/applications/defense. For more information on Microsemi's security capabilities, visit http://www.microsemi.com/applications/security.

About Microsemi
Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC) offers a comprehensive portfolio of semiconductor and system solutions for communications, defense & security, aerospace and industrial markets. Products include high-performance and radiation-hardened analog mixed-signal integrated circuits, FPGAs, SoCs and ASICs; power management products; timing and synchronization devices and precise time solutions, setting the world's standard for time; voice processing devices; RF solutions; discrete components; enterprise storage and communication solutions, security technologies and scalable anti-tamper products; Ethernet solutions; Power-over-Ethernet ICs and midspans; as well as custom design capabilities and services. Microsemi is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, Calif., and has approximately 4,800 employees globally. Learn more at www.microsemi.com.