Inside Secure acquires SypherMedia

Tuesday, November 7th, 2017
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Inside Secure Acquires SypherMedia to Boost Its Silicon IP Business and Root-of-Trust Offering

  • Brings critical security technologies in the areas of provisioning and protection against semiconductor reverse engineering and cloning

AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France — Inside Secure (Euronext Paris: INSD) (Paris:INSD), at the heart of security solutions for mobile and connected devices, today announced that it has acquired SypherMedia International, Incorporated (“SypherMedia”), a California-based leading security solutions and services provider, for up to US$10 million, including a potential earn-out of up to US$3 million.

SypherMedia is a key player in embedded security from product design to product life cycle management. SypherMedia’s secure provisioning(1) solution, a critical piece of a robust root-of-trust(2) solution, is used by many leading chipmakers and consumer electronics manufacturers to address the critical security needs in the automotive, IoT, mobile, and smart TV markets.

SypherMedia also brings to Inside Secure its process that secure semiconductor designs during manufacturing, Circuit Camouflage Technology™, relying on 45 U.S. patents, deployed in established markets like Pay TV and printer ink cartridges.

Today, SypherMedia serves more than sixty customers worldwide, based on a licensing model, a significant portion of the revenues being recurring.

This acquisition is a significant step in the execution of Inside Secure’s growth strategy to bring security at the heart of its customer products and solutions. It brings in particular:

  • A widely-deployed secure provisioning capability to enable managing the root of trust of a device through its entire life cycle, complementing existing portfolio of silicon IP cores;
  • A unique, foundational, patent-protected chip anti-counterfeiting technology to address growing security challenges, in particular tampering, IP theft, reverse engineering and cloning;
  • An extension of the company’s security-as-a-service offerings across the complete value chain, from chip manufacturing, to device manufacturing, to in-field services; and
  • Short-term upselling opportunities with Inside Secure’s current customers.

“The acquisition of SypherMedia enables us to accelerate the execution of our strategy on Silicon IP business towards embedded security solutions that combine product and service offerings, aiming at generating recurring revenues,” said Amedeo D’Angelo, President and Chief Executive Officer of Inside Secure. “This is a great opportunity to complement our existing offering and accelerate our ability to provide our customers with complete solutions that bring security at the heart of their products from design to the entire chip lifecycle. As an example, combining our root-of-trust solution and SypherMedia’s provisioning is key to bring security to the growing IoT and automotive markets. All in all, bringing SypherMedia onboard creates substantial value for our customers, our employees and our shareholders.”

“Inside Secure is the ideal buyer for SypherMedia, with strong technical synergies and a worldwide sales and marketing organization to help us bring our technology to new geographies and markets,” said Dennis Flaharty, Chief Executive Officer of SypherMedia; “The entire SypherMedia team is excited to join Inside Secure today.”

At closing, Inside Secure paid US$7 million in cash, and could pay an additional cash amount of up to US$3 million in the years 2019, 2020 and 2021 (up to US$1 million each year), subject to completion of certain revenue targets for the calendar years 2018, 2019 and 2020.

1. Provisioning is the injection of keys, credentials, data, tokens into a personalized device either at manufacturing, or in the field or Over-The-Air to enable secure applications and services.
2. Root of trust (or RoT) is the foundation for the trustworthiness of a device or a system. Roots of trust are hardware/software components that are inherently trusted. RoT a set of functions that constitutes a common trust anchor recognized by operating systems and applications of a device. It is ensuring authentication, confidentiality and integrity of data and transactions.