We protect your critical systems.
Xiphera in brief
Our mission statement is to protect critical systems by designing security directly into hardware.
Xiphera is a Finnish company designing hardware-based security solutions using standardised cryptographic algorithms. We have strong cryptographic expertise, extensive experience in system design, and deep knowledge on reprogrammable logic, enabling us to protect our customers’ critical information and assets.
Xiphera’s product portfolio consists of secure and efficient cryptographic Intellectual Property (IP) cores, designed for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). Our widely applicable solutions for various end markets offer our customers peace of mind in a dangerous world.
Our story
The two co-founders of Xiphera, Matti Tommiska and Kimmo Järvinen, first worked together in an academic cryptographic project for a few years in the beginning of 2000’s. In 2016, they started to seriously discuss the widening gap between the strong theoretical foundation of cryptography and the often imperfect implementations of cryptography in mission critical systems.
Their conclusion was clear: Everyone deserves security, but designing secure systems is not for everyone. Security is fundamentally based on cryptography, and a flawless implementation of cryptography is an absolute requirement for secure systems. Software-based implementations of cryptography inherently have more potential weaknesses than a hardware-based implementation. This observation crystallised the underlying potential for a new company, and Xiphera, Ltd, was founded in July, 2017.
Since then, we have grown organically in international markets, investing in further product development as well as widening the global partnership network. The number of employees has increased in both technical and commercial roles, still letting us to retain the nimbleness of a growth company.
Cryptography should never be considered stagnant, and we will follow the industry development and proactively react to and support new innovations and changes in standards and algorithms. Our ambition is to continue organic and profitable growth, explore new target market possibilities, and become a world-recognized expert and leader in hardware-based security and cryptography.
Our people
Contact our people: firstname.lastname@xiphera.com
Matti Tommiska
CEO, Co-Founder
PhD
Matti is an electronics professional with 10 years of academic career followed by 13 years of expertise in international semiconductor business.
During his industry career he has worked for Spansion, Altera, and Intel in both technical and sales roles. He has significant experience of the semiconductor market, customer applications and the security challenges they face. Matti and the co-founder Kimmo have known each other already for two decades: was the supervisor for Kimmo’s master’s thesis in the early 2000’s.
Matti holds a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology (2005).
One of Matti’s hobbies since childhood has been chess, and his favorite openings include King’s Gambit when playing white, and King’s Indian Defence when playing black.
Kimmo Järvinen
CTO, Co-Founder
PhD
Kimmo is a hardware cryptography engineer and researcher with almost 20 years of expertise of the field.
He has had academic research positions both in Finland (Aalto University and University of Helsinki) and Belgium (KU Leuven). His main expertise is designing FPGA-based secure and efficient coprocessors for modern cryptographic algorithms. He has authored more than 60 scientific publications about cryptography, cryptographic engineering, and secure embedded systems.
Kimmo holds a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology (2008).
Kimmo likes to spend his free time by taking photos with his camera. Some examples of Kimmo’s pictures can be seen on this website.
Tommi Lampila
Chief Revenue Officer
M.Sc. (Industrial Engineering)
Tommi is a cybersecurity professional with over 20 years of experience in industry roles – in product, sales, marketing, and delivery management of cybersecurity solutions and services.
He has worked for SSH Communications Security for seventeen years on three different continents, and established the SSH APAC subsidiary in Hong Kong in 2010. He has also led the technical cybersecurity services at KPMG Finland for five years.
Tommi holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Tampere University of Technology (1999).
Tommi is a film buff, but despite having worked as a background actor in a major film, has not heard from an agent since. He also enjoys live music, literature, and outdated computer games.
Mimmi Kuusisaari
Marketing & Communications Coordinator
M.Sc. (Econ. & Bus. Adm.)
Mimmi takes care of Xiphera’s marketing, brand, PR, and communications.
She holds a master’s degree in Economics and Business Administration from Aalto University, majoring in marketing in both bachelor’s and master’s studies.
Mimmi connects her work’s visual side to her freetime, being a photography enthusiast. In addition to visual hobbies, Mimmi enjoys good movies and books, as well as spending her time with various sports.
Petri Jehkonen
Director of Strategic Programs
M.Sc.Tech.
Petri has 30 years of experience in various industries including semiconductor, crypto, camera-technology, and consumer electronics.
His experience covers engineering, project management, and marketing & sales positions. Recently he has complemented his skill-set even further at Aalto University. Furthermore, he has work experience in the field of education.
Petri has passion for seeking knowledge and explaining complex systems and advanced theories with easy to digest practical examples.
Petri holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Aalto University and bachelor’s degree in social services and health care. His hobbies include outdoor activities and Cuban salsa among others. He also enjoys creating software and building electronic gadgets.
Fatiqa Nadeem
Product Manager
M.Sc. (Software and Service Engineering)
Fatiqa is software engineer with 6 years of experience in industry roles – in product management, software quality assurance and consultancy.
She has professional experience in driving the design and development of new product features to ensure customer success. She holds a master’s degree in software and service engineering with a minor in entrepreneurial leadership from Aalto University. Fatiqa is passionate about developing products that create value and loves to organise the chaos behind the delivery of a successful project.
Fatiqa is a Formula 1 enthusiasts and makes sure to watch every race. She recently started learning ski and has several injuries to vouch for her talent. Other than that she loves to play squash and has fat cat named Bruce, The Batman.
Valtteri Allekotte
Developer
M.Sc.Tech.
Valtteri is a product developer with an education and a background in electrical engineering.
Valtteri is a developer expert in FPGA, digital design and hardware. He holds a master degree in electrical engineering at Aalto University. According to Valtteri his greatest joy is executing innovations into action and solving product development dilemmas.
Valtteri is a Finnish Baseball enthusiast and represents in the Aalto University’s varsity team.
Tuomo Tarvainen
System Architect
B.Sc. (Automation engineering)
Tuomo is a system architect with more than 30 years experience in semiconductors and telecommunication.
During his career he has worked for Tecnomen, Micronas, Philips and Altera/Intel. He has significant experience in digital logic design including System-on-Chip (SoC).
Tuomo holds a B.Sc in automation engineering from Helsinki Polytechnic Institute (HTOL, 1989). His hobbies include literature, fishing, farming, and woodworks.
Estuardo Alpírez Bock
Senior Cryptographic Engineer
PhD
Estuardo is a cryptographer with experience on different areas of the field, going from side channel attacks to definitional studies and provable security.
He completed his PhD at Aalto University in Finland on the topic of White-box cryptography (2020). After that, Estuardo held research positions at Radboud University in the Netherlands and also at Aalto University where he worked on topics related to hardware security and side channel analysis of post-quantum cryptographic candidates. Estuardo also worked at the IHP Institute for High Performance Microelectronics in Germany, where he gained experience on hardware design of cryptographic algorithms.
On his free time, Estuardo enjoys exploring different areas in the city of Helsinki and practicing his Finnish over good cups of coffee.
Henri Tuovinen
Thesis Worker
B.Sc.Tech.
Henri is a M.Sc. thesis worker at Xiphera.
Henri studies electrical engineering at Aalto University, focusing on digital integrated circuit design. He is finishing his studies with his thesis and plans to graduate in spring, 2024.
During his free time, Henri likes to indoor cycle, listen to music, and tinker with electronics.
Atte Tommiska
Developer
Mathematics student
Atte is a product developer who is currently in his final year of bachelor studies in engineering physics and mathematics.
Atte has his major studies in mathematics and system sciences at Aalto University. Atte is responsible for embedded system programming and has a great grasp on post quantum cryptography. He is a big fan of both programming and mathematics and working at Xiphera allows him to combine the two passions.
Outside of work or his studies, Atte enjoys playing Texas hold’em and challenging video games. He is also a basketball fan who likes to watch the NBA and play the beautiful game with his friends at the nearby courts in Otaniemi.
Target markets
Xiphera’s products and solutions have applications in various markets, where the customers’ security needs, threat model, and performance requirements vary. Depending on the use case, the focus can be either on high performance, optimised resource use, or a balanced combination of the two.
Communications
Security has for a long time been an important factor in network design. The ongoing adoption of 5G technology further increases the need to properly plan and design security solutions into communications networks.
In addition to security, the communications market has a major focus on power consumption and performance measured as the achieved line rate in gigabits per second (Gbps). Example applications include both look-aside and inline acceleration of symmetric encryption at 10, 25, or 40 Gbps.
These line rates are an excellent fit for Intellectual Property (IP) cores running on FPGAs and ASICs, since their performance, power consumption, and resource requirements in many cases clearly outperform software-based implementations.
Xiphera offers high-speed versions of IP cores and solutions targeting the performance requirements of demanding communications applications.
Industrial automation
Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 offer new business opportunities for traditional control and automation companies, but an absolute requirement for the business case to materialise is comprehensive end-to-end security from industrial end points (sensors, actuators, etc.) to the cloud.
High-level security goals are relatively easy to formulate, but translating these goals into concrete cryptographic implementations is an underestimated challenge.
Additional challenges include diverse platforms and hardware architectures, and lack of international security standards targeting the industrial market.
Xiphera offers compact versions of IP cores targeting the resource and performance requirements of industrial applications, and a hardware-based security solution also enables the customers to standardize on a flexible and scalable platform with a long lifetime.
Critical infrastructure
The critical infrastructure (for example, governmental communications, utilities companies, military applications) market have the most advanced threat models, and in many cases quantum computing technology has to be taken into account when designing secure systems.
A hardware-based implementation of security achieves a higher National Security Accreditation Authority (NCSA) Protection Level than a software-based solution, and another advantage specifically for FPGAs is the relative ease of achieving red/black separation.
All Xiphera’s IP blocks execute in constant time making them resistant to timing side-channel attacks, and the integrated TRNG (True Random Number Generator) removes the need for an external TRNG chip, thus reducing the attack surface.