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Green Hills Software Announces Padded Cell™ Secure Hypervisor

The World’s First Secure Hypervisor Scales from Embedded to Enterprise


GREEN HILLS SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 2007, SANTA BARBARA, CA —December 11, 2007
Green Hills Software, Inc., the technology leader in device software optimization (DSO) and real-time operating systems (RTOS), today announced the world’s first secure hypervisor. Padded Cell™ Secure Hypervisor supports the widest range of computing platforms – from embedded devices to enterprise desktop and server systems. Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor runs on top of Green Hills Software’s INTEGRITY® separation kernel, the first and only operating system ever to be accepted by a U.S. NIAP lab into a high assurance (EAL6+) Common Criteria security evaluation.

"Many people believe that hypervisors are the solution to security problems. But existing hypervisors actually make security problems worse by providing another avenue for attack," commented Dan O’Dowd, founder and chief executive officer, Green Hills Software. "Everybody has become accustomed to the fail-first, patch-later mentality adopted by the world’s largest software organizations and products. The fact is that it is possible to build totally secure, hacker-proof software upon which critical computing assets and resources can depend. Our introduction of Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor continues to demonstrate this by pushing the envelope of applications that can benefit from our proven approach to safety, security, and reliability."

Applications of the Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor
In addition to the compartmentalization and virtualization of guest operating systems, the Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor and its EAL6+ compliant security policies enable breakthroughs for many of the world’s long unresolved security problems, including the ability to: safely browse the Internet and use email; trust the launch and execution of virus scanning software; protect sensitive personal and medical records from compromise; guarantee the authenticity and integrity of cash withdrawals, wire transfers, point of sale transactions, and other high value financial enterprises; and ensure the availability and validity of electronic voting systems. Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor also enables the safe, secure, reliable execution of hard real-time applications and guest operating systems in a wide range of emerging embedded devices targeting the networking, medical, industrial and automotive markets.

Virtualization Does Not Imply Better Security
Many commercial hypervisors suffer from the same complexity, architecture, and vulnerability problems that result in poor security within typical desktop operating systems and applications. In fact, security experts have shown that software-based virtualization can actually reduce platform security: vulnerabilities in a hypervisor can enable an attacker to take over not just one operating environment, but all the operating environments running on the computer. The Green Hills Software approach avoids all of these problems by using proven separation between virtual machines and by ensuring that the virtualization software itself runs as an application, unable to circumvent the security policies of the separation kernel.

The Broadest Guest Operating System Ecosystem
In the IT world, Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor supports general purpose desktop and server operating systems such as Solaris, Red Hat Linux, BSD, and Windows. In the embedded world, Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor runs guest embedded operating systems such as INTEGRITY, VxWorks®, and Linux. Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor takes advantage of the latest hardware virtualization support, including Intel® vPro™ technology, to provide optimal virtualization performance without sacrificing security. "Intel vPro processor technology resolves key concerns around security with such features as Intel Virtualization Technology and Intel Trusted Execution Technology that are finding broad acceptance among developers of embedded, mobile and desktop systems," said Gregory Bryant, vice president, Digital Enterprise Group and general manager, Digital Office Platform Division, Intel. "Taking advantage of the capabilities of Intel vPro processor technology, Green Hills Software is able to enhance the security capabilities of its INTEGRITY PC™."

INTEGRITY PC Technology
Green Hills Software’s INTEGRITY PC is a software platform designed for the military, intelligence, financial, medical, and other critical infrastructure communities where PC users must manage and protect high value information. INTEGRITY PC is based on the safety and security-certified INTEGRITY real-time operating system and Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor. The platform enables systems designers to build the most security-critical applications and run them alongside familiar operating environments, saving cost, size, weight, and power over multiple hardware platforms. Therefore, even as it improves flexibility and security for PC users, INTEGRITY PC is reducing energy use and CO2 emissions.

Availability
The Padded Cell Secure Hypervisor runs on commercial, off-the-shelf computing platforms. For general purpose enterprise availability information, please contact: info@integrityglobalsecurity.com. For special purpose and embedded availability information, please contact: virtual-info@ghs.com

About Green Hills Software
Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software, Inc. is the technology leader in device software optimization (DSO) and real-time operating systems (RTOS) for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. Our royalty-free INTEGRITY® and velOSity™ real-time operating systems, µ-velOSity™ microkernel, compilers, MULTI® and AdaMULTI™ integrated development environments, DoubleCheck™ integrated static analyzer and TimeMachine™ tool suite offer a complete development solution that addresses both deeply embedded and high-reliability applications. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software on the web at www.ghs.com.

Green Hills, the Green Hills logo, Padded Cell, INTEGRITY PC, MULTI, INTEGRITY, velOSity, µ-velOSity, AdaMULTI, DoubleCheck and TimeMachine, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Green Hills Software, Inc. in the U.S. and/or internationally. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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