High Density Devices

High Density Devices AS in brief:

Latest info to shareholders:

Highlights:

• Norwegian privately owned company
• Strong owner base
• Patient & long-term major owners
• Additional equity raised in 2008 (existing owners)
• Venture funding obtained in 2009 (27 MNOK in new equity added) 
  • 18.5 MNOK in September 2009
  • Strong financial platform for future growth
  • Further 9 MNOK in December 2009
• Main focus is on further industrialisation, commercialisation & professionalization of the Company
  • New organisation
  • Industry partners, etc.

• Established in 1998
• Head Office in Kristiansand, Norway. Offices in Oslo and Bergen, Norway. 
  • Approx. 10 employees & hired consultants
  • New recruitments on-going, especially within product design, sales/marketing and projects/logistics
• Approx. 100 mNOK (USD 17) invested into HDD and the HDD Encryption Technology to date
• Strong and unique Patents (e.g. US Patent)
• Fully developed and proven technology
• Strong reference projects, e.g. DoD CICS project
• Now ready for further commercial launch into a maturing encryption market

Company background:

High Density Devices AS (HDD) was established in 1998 by a team of computer-industry veterans who saw a growing need to protect valuable data where it is most vulnerable - at rest on storage media like hard disk drives. Based in a Norwegian town southwest of Oslo, the company spent the next four years quietly developing leading edge encryption technologies.

In 2002, the company's breakthrough technologies caught the attention of the US Department of Defence. The DoD quickly recognized that the SecureD encryption technology (now [hiddn]™) provided encryption strong enough for military purposes in a form factor that could be easily adopted for commercial applications.

As a result, High Density Devices AS and partners in Common Information Centric Security (CICS) project received $8.2 million over the next four years from the US Defence Budget to certify and validate the SecureD platform. This lengthy validation process was completed in late 2005 and [hiddn]™is now among very few, possibly the only,  commercially available technologies for encryption of data at rest that is validated at both FIPS 140-2 level 3 and Common Criteria EAL 4+.

The first certified [hiddn]™ encryption module was completed in 2006, and since then the company has developed a full line of related products. Now, anyone who uses a hard-drive to store data - including desktop computer users, mobile professionals, and even non-PC device manufacturers - can deploy the [hiddn]™ encryption chip to protect their data at rest.

At the heart of all [hiddn]™products is a proprietary VHDL encryption core which utilizes dedicated mechanisms to handle keys and encode data at true wire-line speed. An FPGA implementation of the core has been validated as a self-contained encryption module to FIPS 140-2 level 3 and Common Criteria EAL4+. The core encryption algorithms carry separate FIPS certificates, and the 256-bit strength AES cipher used is regarded as a technology standard. The [hiddn]™ technology has been granted several patents, and have additional patents are pending worldwide.

The result of more than 10 years of dedicated research and development, the [hiddn]™ encryption technology now provides one tool to protect all data stored on computers. [hiddn]™ eliminates the risk of data theft or misuse - even if the computer containing the data is lost or stolen. Best of all, [hiddn]™'s military strength encryption is platform agnostic, transparent in operation, and works without the need for software or human intervention.

Strategy:

The Company's Board of Directors, Management Team and largest owners have developed an extensive business plan for further development, professionalisation, industrialisation and commercialisation of the sophisticated and patented technology developed by the Company over the last 10 years. The Company focuses the following strategic elements:

• Product deliveries in "high-end" markets (certified solutions)
• Product deliveries in volume markets based on new low-cost variants of existing and new products including ASIC-technology (certified and non-certified)
• Related competitive software solutions and software products (Key Management Systems - KMS) to enhance sales of the above
• Licencing of technology to partners, etc. (allowing use of developed technology) incl. sales/deliveries of modules/components (e.g. complete CM and/or ASIC)
• Licencing of patented technology to partners, etc. (allow use of technology/solutions covered by patent, e.g. solutions based on TCG's encryption specifications/recommendations, access to VHDL-code for own silicon, etc.)

Largest shareholders as of December 29th 2009: