Start-Up’s Profile: High Density Devices

Company
High Density Devices AS (HDD)

Location
Head office in Kristiansand, Norway and offices in Oslo and Bergen

No. of Employees
10

Born in
1998

Founding
18.5 MNOK in September 2009, further 9 MNOK to come in December 2009 (Total 27.5 MNOK is about US $$4.7 million.)
Largest shareholders are Incitia Ventures II AS (35%), and Tønnevold Venture & Invest AS, (26%)

Executives

• Olav Stokke, CEO, formerly co-founder and CEO of NextGenTel, the second largest broadband and xDSL service provider in Norway
• Bjørn Nilsen, production director, prior co-founder and CTO of the same company
• Trond-Erik Bognø, previously sales director, co-founder and sales director of once more NextGenTel
• Adnan Visic, CTO, prior to that software developer in the R&D department of Ericsson
• Tormod Fjellgård, marketing director

Technology
In 2002, the company patented technology, SecureD (now hiddn), caught the attention of the US Department of Defense as it provided encryption strong enough for military purposes in a form factor that could be adopted for commercial applications. As a result, HDD and partners in Common Information Centric Security (CICS) project received $8.2 million over the next four years from the U.S. Defense Budget to validate the SecureD platform. This validation process was completed in late 2005 and HDD is now among very few commercially available technologies for encryption of data at rest validated at both FIPS 140-2 level 3 and Common Criteria EAL 4+. At the heart of the products is a proprietary VHDL encryption core which utilizes dedicated mechanisms to handle keys and encode data at true wire-line speed. The core encryption algorithms carry separate FIPS certificates, and the 256-bit strength AES cipher used can be regarded as a technology standard. hiddn eliminates the risk of data theft or misuse – even if the computer is lost or stolen. Furthermore, the military strength encryption is platform agnostic, transparent in operation, and works without the need for software or human intervention. hiddn is built on a simple and robust ‘bump in
the wire’ approach. By operating on the ATA protocol level, hiddn
encrypts all user data sent to the hard disk transparent of the
operating system and thus maintains platform independency. The company has also developed a proprietary ‘Key Management System’ to administer and manage encryption keys.

Applications
Encryption of external storage media (HDDs, USB keys)

Market
Licensing or ASIC implementation in other manufacturers’ products