Munich, Germany – Infineon Technologies AG, a supplier of chip card circuits (ICs), announced that the high-security contactless-interface microcontrollers, the SLE 66CLX800PE and the SLE 66CLX360PE, of its family SLE 66PE have received Common Criteria “EAL 5+ high” certification based on the latest BSI-PP-0002 protection profile.

“This achievement adds yet another milestone in Infineon’s outstanding track record of certified security products,” said Dr. Helmut Gassel, Vice President and General Manager of the Chip Card & Security ICs business unit at Infineon Technologies. “This certification provides unbiased proof that Infineon’s security ICs withstand the most recent and most sophisticated attacks and fulfill the mandatory high-security needs of electronic identification and electronic payment markets.”

The SLE 66PE contactless family combines comprehensive security, global interoperability, high speed and low power consumption. It supports the complete range of contactless proximity interfaces, such as ISO/IEC 14443 Type B and Type A with optional ISO/IEC 18092 Felica passive mode and features Mifare® emulation. As a world’s first, the security chips allow for concurrent usage of the contact-based and contactless interface opening doors to new chip card applications in a rapidly changing market environment.

Contactless applications have to cope with very tight power and time constraints. Interactions between card and reader have to be terminated within approximately 0.5 seconds. The high-security contactless chips of the SLE 66PE family considerably shorten authentication times by speeding up encryption and decryption operations. Their very high transaction speeds of up to 848 kbit/s for communicating with the reader device is twice the speed of today’s typical transaction. The integral security concept fulfills all mandatory international security requirements.

“Transmission speeds of up to 848 kbit/s, sophisticated power management and cutting edge crypto accelerators render performance hungry contactless applications in payment, identification and transportation feasible and allow to raise the security level,” Gassel added. “SLE 66PE products relieve our customers from the burden to compromise on user functionality and security in such an environment.”

Further information on Infineon’s chip card IC product portfolio is available at www.infineon.com/security.