Infineon supplies security microcontrollers

The microcontrollers used come from the SLE 78 family which ranks among Infineon’s high security products and deploys the company’s security technology “Integrity Guard”. “Integrity Guard” is one of the world’s most advanced technologies for delivering a particularly high level of long-lasting protection for the data on chip cards. Examples of the data involved in the German e-health card with six-year validity are the insured person’s name, date of birth, gender and address as well as insurance number and insurance status. Plans are for at least ten percent of persons with statutory health insurance coverage in Germany – i.e. six million – to receive the new e-health card by the end of 2011. In the year 2013 all Germany’s 60 million persons with statutory health insurance coverage, which is equivalent to around 75 percent of Germany’s total population, should already be in possession of the card. In Germany, there are about another ten million persons with private health insurance coverage. Infineon’s security microcontroller in the e-health card is a chip providing state-of-the-art protection for the personal data. As with all “Integrity Guard”-based security microcontrollers, the data on the e-health card is not only stored in encrypted form but also processed in encrypted form. Chips with “Integrity Guard” have two central processing units which cross-check each other continuously. If they detect any error that might stem from manipulation, they take immediate protective action and abort ongoing arithmetic operations. “Infineon is the global market leader in security chips for e-health cards and health insurance cards,” said Dr. Helmut Gassel, President of the Chip Card & Security Division of Infineon Technologies AG. “In employing our security microcontrollers, the German electronic health card is using one of the currently most advanced security technologies to provide a particularly high level of long-lasting protection for the insurance holders’ data.”