Battelle barricades system from security threats

Battelle unveiled the Barricade, a technology that detects counterfeit integrated circuits in devices used for aerospace and defence systems, critical infrastructure, medical devices, and other applications. It offers non-destructive authentication of electronic components from both trusted and untrusted sources at a lower cost than existing methods.

"As counterfeiting continues to be a growing issue for both suppliers and manufacturers, ensuring that all components are effectively and accurately verified for authenticity has become an increasingly time-consuming and expensive task," said Larry J. House, Cyber Technical director of Battelle. "Barricade represents a giant step forward from current approaches to chip authentication that will dramatically simplify the validation process."

Barricade is comprised of electronic component signal acquisition hardware and software installed at customer sites. The simple validation process involves placing the IC into a chip socket in the Barricade hardware to receive confirmation of authenticity or detection of counterfeit or cloned components within seconds.

Barricade is applicable to both analogue and digital devices. It determines authenticity based on electrical signatures and a classification algorithm that generates identity signatures for each class of chips in a given class of authentic devices. Only a few authentic chips are necessary to enrol an entire class of chips into Barricade.

Unlike existing anti-counterfeiting technologies, which require tagging and tracking, or time-consuming and costly commercial testing, Barricade provides a simple and repeatable process that can be conducted at any point in the supply chain to eliminate the risk of counterfeit components and to help address emerging regulations for anti-counterfeiting.

In addition to detecting counterfeit integrated circuits, testing of Battelle Barricade in commercial environments has shown promise for its application in other critical areas, including detection of military grade or commercial grade components and cloned components.