SECURE-IC SAS

Their core work

SECURE-IC SAS is a French hardware security company that designs and integrates security features directly into integrated circuits and embedded systems — protecting chips and SoCs against hardware-level threats such as side-channel attacks, fault injection, and execution tampering. In EU research projects, they serve as a specialist security contributor, applying their expertise to securing complex computing architectures including heterogeneous multi-core processors and edge AI deployments. Their technical footprint spans security analysis, runtime execution monitoring, and hardware acceleration in the context of distributed and resource-constrained systems. Their work sits at the silicon level, making them relevant wherever trustworthy hardware execution is a requirement rather than an afterthought.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

SECURE-IC's first project, TeamPlay (2018–2021), placed them in the domain of processor-level security — analyzing timing, energy, and security properties of heterogeneous multi-core chips, which maps directly to their core business of hardware security IP. Their second project, BRAINE (2020–2023), marks a clear shift upward in the stack: from individual processor security toward securing distributed AI systems running at the network edge, incorporating big data management and micro data centers. The trajectory is consistent — the same hardware security competency being applied to progressively larger and more complex computing environments, from chips to edge infrastructure.

SECURE-IC is extending its hardware security expertise from individual chip architectures toward distributed edge AI systems, making them increasingly relevant for IoT security, autonomous systems, and AI inference hardware where trust at the hardware level is a hard requirement.

How they like to work

SECURE-IC has participated in EU projects exclusively as a consortium member, never as coordinator — a pattern consistent with a specialist firm that brings deep, narrow expertise to larger research agendas rather than driving them. Despite only two projects, they have engaged with 38 unique partners across 17 countries, which reflects participation in large RIA consortia typical of ICT research where many specialist firms contribute specific components. Working with them likely means contracting a focused technical capability in hardware security, with realistic expectations that they are one of many contributors rather than the project anchor.

With 38 unique consortium partners across 17 countries from just two projects, SECURE-IC has built a disproportionately broad European network relative to their H2020 footprint — a direct consequence of participating in large, multi-partner RIA consortia. Their connections span the EU's core ICT research community and suggest good visibility among academic and industrial partners in the digital technology space.

What sets them apart

SECURE-IC occupies a rare position as a private SME operating at the hardware security IP level — a domain that most software companies, research institutes, and generalist IT firms cannot credibly fill. Where most security players focus on network, application, or cloud layers, SECURE-IC's expertise is in the silicon itself: ensuring that the chip executing the code is trustworthy before any software-level protection even begins. For consortium builders in edge computing, embedded AI, automotive, or industrial IoT, they represent a type of security expertise that is genuinely scarce and often missing from research teams.

Highlights from their portfolio

• TeamPlay
  Their largest-funded H2020 project (EUR 191,888) and the one most directly aligned with their core business — security analysis for heterogeneous multi-core processors, a niche requiring specialized hardware security IP knowledge.
• BRAINE
  Represents SECURE-IC's expansion into edge AI security, with the richest keyword footprint of any their projects — demonstrating that their hardware security expertise is being applied to next-generation distributed AI infrastructure.