Novachips Received NIAP Common Criteria Certification on Self-Encrypting Up to 10TB SSD

Novachips Co., Ltd. received a Common Criteria (CC) certification by the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP), based on US government approved protection profiles for full drive encryption.

The certified Express SSDs are first PCIe/NVMe products to be listed on the NIAP Product Compliant List (PCL), and Scalar SSDs are also a first SSD which is breaking through 10TB capacity in PCL.

Use case example of certified M.2 and SATA SSD modules
The collaborative protection profiles for full drive encryption was developed to provide requirements for data-at-rest protection for lost device that may contain confidential data, and these cPPs consist of 2 components elements, Authorization Acquisition (AA) and Encryption Engine (EE). The company’s certified products are compliant with both AA and EE elements as the complete full drive encryption solution without any additional component elements.

ASIC NVS3800 controller

To achieve CC certification, the firm had developed all required cryptographic algorithms and security functions based on in-house ASIC controller NVS3800 hardware and firmware without adopting any 3^rd party security IP or components. This single controller design architecture allows achieving lower power consumption, helps to increase product reliability, and supports immediate Zeroize service without any delay factor to destroy the key and key materials via specified host commands or external hardware signal input.

Unlike most other secure SSD products, the firm’s Host Key encryption does not depend on a TPM module, TCG, or OPAL to implement security. Instead, the company is providing a security command document and a unified simple API which enable the developer or user to target and control the certified SSD modules via various interfaces of SATA, USB, or NVMe. These techniques provide superior and flexible solutions for mission-critical defense projects, as well as for commercial enterprise environments, and have no requirements for installing and testing any new 3^rd party software and tools to use a new interface.

“We are pleased to announce our Common Criteria certification on Scalar and Express P-series products,” said Daniel Kim, CEO. “These are great achievements in Novachips milestones, in addition to FIPS-140-2 CMVP certification in 2021, and we will keep developing innovative flash storage products for the customers who need best-in-class data storage devices to build more advanced trusted computing system.”

“Cybersecurity is becoming a top priority. Each governmental policies and executive orders are urging every government department and defense companies to adopt data encryption to improve cybersecurity,” said SJ Yoo, director, global sales. “Now, by adding Scalar and Express P-series on the NIAP PCL, the customers have a broader range of selection of data storage devices which support larger capacity and higher performance, compared to other previously-certified items.“

Certified part number products of Scalar-Series and Express P-series are available to ship out to customers.