Silicon implementation of secure information technology

With the merging of the computer and communications market segments, the need for both data and voice secure information storage and transfer has become critical for consumers, industry, and the government alike. From something as simple as assuring the privacy of cordless telephone conversations to the protection of vital government military information, Secure Information Technology is a field that is growing rapidly in both importance and in the number of organizations developing ways of guaranteeing the accuracy of information and the authenticity of those sending and receiving it. At the heart of secure information technology implementation is the implementation of encryption and decryption techniques in silicon chips, which provide a degree of security, flexibility and performance that is unobtainable with software or other hardware methods. This paper reviews silicon implementations of a number of encryption algorithms, including DES and Skipjack, and the types of systems that are benefiting from their usage