MXI FIPS Is Not Just a Validation For Us!
Larry Hamid comments on the FIPS announcment earlier this month

In an interview with Larry Hamid, CTO for Memory Experts International, we asked ‘It is true that FIPS helps the government sales but how does it help others understand it's value?’ Larry explained that the difference between MXI's FIPS validation is that MXI is level 2 validated. What this means for the customer is that "the FIPS level two is a much broader scope of validation. It's much harder to get level 2 validated being that it covers hardware, not software. This makes all functions on the device including the physical boundary itself, the housing, a part under testing and evaluation."

"In level two you have a real physical boundary, in our case “tamper evidence.” Everything inside that boundary is covered by certification. That means all authentication methods that users are given, all the cryptography, public and private key pair operation, random number generation, key generation and management are covered. The entire hardware is validated, it's complete and customers don’t have to worry whether it’s implemented incorrectly, it just can’t be. This is much different than having a piece of software that’s been validated and building an application around it. Who knows how well it was done, where the keys were stored, or what the security really is?"

“The government is a big part of our market and that is where FIPS came into effect.” FIPS has given the government customers the ability to start purchasing this versatile product. "Once NIST completed the process, and we received certification the flood gates opened up. The FIPS validation has enabled both Canadian and US government departments to buy the product."

We also asked Larry about their recent RSA certification announcement.

"In Feb. we announced a new product which is RSA certified. Remote ACCESS is our remote access product for strong authentication into corporate networks. The customers can now give mobile users the ability to authenticate strongly into their servers and networks from a remote location. All they have to do is swipe their finger, and the back end stays very secure. They can keep all of their existing authentication mechanisms that they have in place on their back end servers but simplify the user experience. In a lot of cases there are five different identity credentials: RSA user name, pass code, domain user name password, and domain name. Normally, the user would have to type this in with their device in hand. Now they can use a swipe of their finger to log them in automatically with all credentials. It’s really convenient for the end user. It’s 100% portable, and the customer gets the same level of security around their network."

Written by:
Tania Galovic
Marketing Manager
Simple Technology Inc.