SANBlaze Expands PCIe Gen6 Security Validation with IDE Support and SBExpress6-SA

SANBlaze Technology, Inc., a provider of NVMe test and validation solutions, announced expanded security validation capabilities for modern storage environments, together with the availability of its SBExpress6-SA standalone PCIe Gen6 NVMe validation platform.As storage architectures become faster, more distributed, and increasingly interconnected, security requirements are expanding across the entire data path. Protecting data at rest is no longer sufficient. Storage developers must establish trust between devices and protect data as it moves across PCIe links, network transports, and storage fabrics – while verifying that security mechanisms continue to operate correctly under real-world workloads and adverse conditions.

“As PCIe Gen6 adoption accelerates, customers are increasingly asking not only how fast their devices operate, but how they can validate security and reliability throughout the data path,” said Rick Walsh, SVP, SANBlaze. “SANBlaze is extending its proven NVMe validation environment to address this evolving landscape, enabling engineering teams to test security implementations through automated, protocol-aware validation.”

Storage Security Across the Data PathCurrent and emerging SANBlaze security capabilities address technologies including Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM), PCIe Integrity and Data Encryption (IDE), Transport Layer Security (TLS), and Encryption of Data in Flight (EDIF).

Rather than simply verifying that a security feature can be enabled, SANBlaze enables developers to evaluate security behavior as part of comprehensive storage validation. Testing can encompass device authentication and trust establishment, secure communications, functional and interoperability testing, error handling and recovery, performance measurement, sustained I/O workloads, and repeatable regression testing.

PCIe IDE provides confidentiality, integrity and replay protection for PCIe Transaction Layer Packets (TLPs), helping protect traffic vs. physical and other attacks that could expose or manipulate data moving between PCIe components.

As IDE becomes increasingly important in PCIe Gen6 storage implementations, SANBlaze is developing validation capabilities that enable storage vendors to exercise IDE functionality as part of their broader PCIe and NVMe test environments.

Combined with SPDM-based device authentication and security capabilities, IDE extends the security validation challenge beyond determining whether a device performs correctly to verifying that communication with that device remains protected.

Security Must Be Tested, Not Just Supported
Implementing a security standard is only the beginning. SANBlaze helps storage vendors verify that security implementations behave correctly across devices, firmware revisions, operating environments and vendor ecosystems – and remain secure during failures, resets, reconnects and sustained workloads. By combining protocol-aware testing, traffic gen, fault injection, performance analysis and repeatable automation, SANBlaze helps engineering teams identify implementation defects earlier and build confidence that storage security works as intended under real-world conditions.

SANBlaze in Your Platform
The SANBlaze SBExpress6-SA standalone test platform supports the entire Certified by SANBlaze test infrastructure for PCIe Gen6 NVMe validation, designed to install directly into a customer’s host system. The SBExpress6-SA provides SANBlaze test and automation capabilities without requiring a dedicated SANBlaze rackmount chassis, allowing developers to perform PCIe Gen6 NVMe validation within their own host environment.

The platform supports PCIe AIC and EDSFF devices under test (DUTs) and includes two front-access PCIe Gen6 MCIO x8 ports, a top-facing DUT slot, integrated DUT power and reset control, hot-plug and surprise-removal testing, error injection, power monitoring and automated test execution.

SBExpress6-SA uses the same SANBlaze VirtuaLUN test environment as the company’s SBExpress-RM6 platform, providing access to SANBlaze automation and validation capabilities through GUI, CLI, REST/XML and Python interfaces.

The result is a flexible Gen6 validation platform that enables storage developers to bring SANBlaze testing directly into existing development environments while addressing functional, performance, interoperability and increasingly important security validation requirements.