Gainesville, FL June 9, 2008 -- The Athena Group, Inc. has been selected by the U.S. Army to develop TeraFire®AT anti-tamper products for FIPS 140-2 certifiable modules and system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. TeraFireAT supports the military’s widespread adoption of advanced security protection by enabling engineers to protect sensitive information in single chip cryptographic devices and modules.

Electronic systems provide crucial product differentiation in virtually every product domain. These high-tech systems are obvious targets for tampering attempts, including reverse engineering, firmware theft, manufacturing overproduction, and counterfeiting. Tampering can cause tremendous negative impact, ranging from loss of competitive advantage and reduced product lifetime, to product liability, loss of addressable market, and even increased government regulation.

By creating a standardized implementation that enables any developer to include TeraFireAT, Athena provides the means to secure both military and consumer electronics without a major impact on schedule or cost. In the past, each component and each system had to develop a unique anti-tamper scheme and implementation, which increased costs and delayed schedules while delivering mixed results. Today, Athena’s TeraFire AT solution provides the integrated hardware, software, and secure OS required to quickly produce designs that are provably resistant to reverse engineering.

“Athena has focused intensely on reducing the cost and time-to-market impacts of employing AT techniques in virtually any new electronic device,” states Jon Mellott, CTO of Athena. “While we often think of AT as primarily a military technology, protecting proprietary information in commercial products is also essential to maintaining a competitive advantage. And critical to making TeraFire AT viable for all applications was removing the two primary barriers to AT adoption cost and schedule.”

About The Athena Group, Inc.

Based in Gainesville, Florida, Athena innovates breakthrough technologies that achieve the optimum balance of power, performance, and silicon area in a wide range of applications such as wireless, satellite, and secure communications. Athena provides patented semiconductor intellectual property (IP) solutions, with products ranging from the market-leading TeraFire® security cores, to Atomic DSPTM cores, and Atomic SDRTM software defined radio cores.

Athena was founded in 1986 and is privately held.

For more information visit: www.athena-group.com  

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Pat Rugg
The Athena Group, Inc.
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