Cloning and counterfeiting are a growing concern for many customers, and is the reason Microchip is delivering a secure boot solution on the SAMA5D3. Microchip is leveraging the security knowledge learned from their experience with secure products being sold in the payment application market, setting a high standard of security. A Secure Boot mechanism prevents counterfeiting/cloning and protects the IP stored in external NAND Flash. During a Secure Boot procedure, the processor authenticates the encrypted program image stored in NAND with the integrated AES hardware block. There are secure secrets stored in the internal Programmable Fuse Box that are used during this process that are only accessible to the Secure Boot process. Secure communications can be established by using the AES hardware peripheral and confidential data can be transmitted and received from other sources without the concern of the data being compromised. In addition to the security functions, these features also add to the overall system reliability by the constant checks that are preformed on the information in the system.