Date: 30/08/2010

Citrix Systems integrates adapters from Cavium Networks in its four new NetScaler platforms

Cavium Networks has announced that Citrix Systems has integrated Cavium's NITROX XL CN16XX NFBE HSM Adapters to achieve Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, Level 2 compliance in four new Citrix NetScaler MPX Platforms. These NetScaler platforms provides a SSL security performance of 5 Gigabits/sec and 45,000 RSA Operations/sec, IO connectivity, compact form factor, and features that enable FIPS 140-2 Level 3 and FIPS 140-3 support, offered by Cavium's FIPS 140-2 Level 2 & 3 certified Hardware Security Module (HSM) Adapters.

HSMs are physical devices with a tamper-resistant enclosure that can be attached directly to the appliance, server or general purpose computer. HSMs provide both logical and physical protection of secure keys from non-authorized use and potential adversaries and are suitable for managing digital keys, accelerating digital signings/second and for providing authentication to access keys for server applications. Achieving FIPS 140-2 level 2 and 3 certification requires significant expertise and time, and OEMs leverage pre-certified HSMs to significantly reduce research and development cost and time-to-market of their systems.

The NITROX XL CN16XX-NFBE Adapter family can deliver both symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic operations including 2048 bit keys and security for government/DoD, financial and healthcare applications.

"The Citrix NetScaler MPX FIPS models accelerate the performance and improve the security of web-based applications for Department of Defense and civilian agencies," said Sunil Potti, vice president of product management and marketing, networking and cloud product group at Citrix. "Cavium's NITROX XL NFBE adapters offer highly scalable performance and future-proofing capabilities that allow us to deliver a high performance platform in a short timeframe. We expect to widely deploy these platforms in federal, financial and healthcare markets."

The FIPS HSM functionality in the NITROX XL CN16XX NFBE also supports an option for two ports of Gigabit Ethernet, adding NIC functionality to the HSM adapter. The PCIe Gen2 adapter also supports a USB interface used for a Level 3 solution. The NITROX XL CN16XX-NFBE adapter family design that can be upgraded to the FIPS140-3 specification, and ECC for digital signing with a firmware update. This family is offered in multiple SKUs spanning in performance from 7,000 RSA Ops/sec and < 1 Gbps to 45,000 RSA Ops/Sec and 5 Gbps.

For more information visit: http://www.caviumnetworks.com.