I. The GDSII File on the Eve of Tape-Out
At a company focused on power management chip design, a project entered the critical tape-out stage. One day, during an internal inspection, the security department discovered that a core IP GDSII layout file could actually be opened directly on an external computer, and it was impossible to trace who had taken it out of the company, when, and by what means.
The investigation process was frustrating. R&D endpoints had USB ports completely open, printing behavior was not recorded, screen photography could not be controlled, and data transfers before employee departures could not be audited. Layout files, SPICE netlists, RTL code, simulation verification data, PDK kits, process deviation data—these assets that constitute a chip’s core competitiveness were scattered in plaintext across hundreds of R&D endpoints. Engineers copied layout files to personal USB drives to continue debugging at home; some sent design screenshots to external partners via WeChat; others uploaded files to personal cloud drives for cross-device work. Each operation, viewed in isolation, was a “normal office action,” but cumulatively, the company’s core technology had silently flowed outside the walls.
This is not an isolated case. In the 2025 TSMC 2nm process technology leak case, multiple employees were suspected of stealing trade secrets related to the most advanced processes, with data flowing to a Japanese company. The engineers involved were ultimately sentenced, and the related company was fined NT$150 million. In 2026, Indian electronics and semiconductor manufacturing giant Tata Electronics suffered a ransomware attack, and files involving Apple and Tesla component designs, manufacturing specifications, etc., were reportedly leaked, totaling over 630GB. Intellectual property protection in the semiconductor industry has risen from a “compliance requirement” to a “survival issue”—the leak of a single chip’s design drawings is enough to make hundreds of millions in R&D investment go down the drain.
II. Why Semiconductor Industry Leaks Are Hard to Manage
File outbound management in the semiconductor industry faces three structural challenges.
- First, the forms of core assets are highly diverse. GDSII layout files, OASIS data, SPICE netlists, RTL source code, PDK kits, simulation verification data, process formulas, yield data—these files belong to different tool chains and format systems, with scattered storage locations and complex circulation paths. A chip design file may need to be transferred multiple times among design departments, process departments, wafer fabs, and packaging and testing plants, and each transfer is a potential leakage node.
- Second, leak channels are highly dispersed and “normalized.” Unlike industries such as finance and government, R&D personnel in semiconductor companies need to frequently engage in technical exchanges with external partners, suppliers, and wafer fabs. Sending design documents via email, confirming process parameters via instant messaging tools, and synchronizing simulation results via cloud drives—these behaviors are reasonable in business terms, but they precisely constitute the main channels for data leakage. Although IT departments have deployed firewalls and email gateways, they can only see traffic and attachment names, cannot determine whether file content is sensitive, and are even less able to distinguish normal business communications from high-risk data outbound transfers.
- Third, the consequences of intellectual property loss are irreversible. Chip design files are different from ordinary business documents. Once leaked, competitors can directly copy or reverse-engineer the product design approach. The leak risk in the semiconductor industry is also highly concentrated in systematic technology leaks caused by “team-style job-hopping” and “whole-team poaching.” The traditional “post-event accountability” model is almost ineffective in this industry—when core technology has already flowed to competitors, accountability can only compensate for part of the loss and cannot recover the loss of competitive advantage.
III. From “Blocking” to “Managing”: Ping64’s Governance Logic
Faced with the above challenges, the traditional security construction approach—deploying a DLP, adding encryption, and then adding auditing—actually exacerbates management fragmentation. Each system can only see the segment it “manages”: DLP knows whether content matches rules but does not know whether the endpoint is compliant; the encryption system knows whether a file is encrypted but does not know which channel the file is being transmitted through; the audit system records operation logs but cannot correlate file content with personnel context.
The core breakthrough of the Ping64 integrated office security platform is: it does not stack security capabilities, but enables them to operate collaboratively on a unified data foundation and policy engine. For file outbound scenarios in the semiconductor industry, this means shifting from “channel blocking” to “file control”—the anchor of control is not which channel the file passes through, but the security attributes carried by the file itself.
The concrete implementation of this logic in the semiconductor industry is reflected in the collaboration of capabilities at three levels.
IV. Content Identification: First “See Clearly,” Then “Judge Accurately”
What semiconductor companies most need to solve is not “blocking all outbound transfers,” but “knowing which files should not be sent out.”
Ping64’s content identification engine supports multiple technical paths. Keyword and regular expression matching can identify sensitive fields such as project codes, customer names, and process parameters; file fingerprint comparison generates unique fingerprints for core files such as GDSII layouts, RTL source code, and PDK kits, enabling precise identification even if files are renamed, have their extensions changed, or are compressed and packaged; OCR recognition extracts and matches text content from design screenshots and scanned documents; document attribute analysis identifies metadata such as author, creation time, and modification records.
These identification capabilities are integrated into the enterprise’s data classification and grading system. Enterprises can define GDSII layout files, process formulas, and yield data as “highly sensitive,” ordinary project documents and promotional materials as “generally sensitive,” and public materials as “non-sensitive.” Once an outbound transfer occurs, the system automatically determines the file’s sensitivity level, providing a basis for subsequent policy execution.
Take an actual scenario from a chip design company: an engineer sent a design screenshot to an external partner via WeChat. Under a traditional architecture, the email gateway and firewall would have no awareness of this. But on the Ping64 platform, the OCR recognition engine automatically extracts the text content from the screenshot and compares it with a preset sensitive keyword library, identifying that the screenshot contains core circuit parameters. The system blocks the outbound behavior in real time and triggers an alert.
V. Control and Approval: Giving Every Outbound Transfer Context
Content identification solves the problem of “which files are sensitive,” while channel control solves the problem of “how files get out.”
Ping64 covers all common outbound channels in semiconductor companies: email clients and webmail attachments, instant messaging tools (WeChat, WeCom, DingTalk, etc.), personal cloud drives and cloud storage, browser upload behavior, removable storage device copying, and physical channels such as printing and Bluetooth. Through the backend, administrators can clearly see when each file was sent, through which channel, by which account, and to where.
But merely “seeing” is not enough. Outbound scenarios in the semiconductor industry are highly complex: sending process parameters to a wafer fab is a necessary business action, providing design documents to a packaging and testing plant is a normal collaboration need, and delivering PDK kits to suppliers is part of the R&D process. If a “one-size-fits-all” blocking strategy is adopted, it will seriously hinder business flow.
Ping64’s approach is to deeply link the outbound approval process with content identification, endpoint status, and recipient identity. When an engineer initiates a file outbound request, the system automatically performs a content compliance check, identifies the file’s sensitivity level, and triggers the corresponding approval process based on the enterprise’s preset policies. In the approval interface, the approver can see not only the file name and application reason, but also contextual information such as file content summary, sensitivity level, applicant’s endpoint compliance status, historical outbound records, recipient identity, and historical cooperation records, enabling more accurate judgments.
After approval, the system automatically processes the outbound file: adding tracing watermarks, setting validity periods, limiting the number of openings, and embedding tracing identifiers. When an outbound file is leaked, the enterprise can quickly locate the source of the leak and the responsible party through watermark information. A complete record of each outbound operation is archived in the unified audit center, including the sender, approver, recipient, file information, outbound channel, timestamp, and tracing identifier.
VI. Endpoint Protection: Files “Cannot Be Taken Away, Cannot Be Opened”
A large part of the leak risk in the semiconductor industry comes from management vacuums on the endpoint side. Ping64 establishes three layers of protection on the endpoint side.
- The first layer is transparent document encryption. For specified types of files such as GDSII, OASIS, SPICE, RTL, and PDK, Ping64 automatically encrypts them when they are created or saved. The encryption process is completely transparent to endpoint users and EDA tools, without affecting normal opening, editing, and saving operations. Once an encrypted file leaves the enterprise’s controlled environment—copied to a USB drive, uploaded to a personal cloud drive, or sent via a chat tool—it cannot be opened or will appear as garbled text. Ping64 supports deep compatibility with mainstream EDA tools and will not cause layout tool lag, simulation process interruption, or file corruption due to encryption.
- The second layer is fine-grained control of peripheral ports. Administrators can set USB ports to read-only, disabled, or only allow certified encrypted USB drives according to job requirements. For printers, printing content can be restricted, print watermarks can be set, and print logs can be recorded. For unnecessary interfaces such as Bluetooth and infrared, they can be disabled by default, cutting off data outflow paths at the physical level.
- The third layer is application-level network control. Applications such as personal cloud drives, instant messaging tools, and personal email are high-risk channels for file outbound transfers. Ping64 can identify and control applications running on endpoints, intercepting or auditing file outbound behavior to ensure that R&D personnel cannot transmit core files through unauthorized applications.
These three layers of protection do not operate independently. Transparent document encryption gives files protection attributes, peripheral control restricts physical channels, and application control restricts network channels—the three share the same policy engine and user identity system, forming a complete protection chain from file attributes to channel control to user permissions.
VII. Integrated Advantages in Supply Chain Collaboration Scenarios
The particularity of the semiconductor industry lies in the fact that file outbound transfer is not only a “leak prevention” issue but also a “collaboration security” issue. Chip design companies need to exchange process parameters with wafer fabs, exchange test data with packaging and testing plants, synchronize design documents with IP suppliers, and share simulation results with EDA tool vendors. Every collaboration involves file outbound transfer, and every outbound transfer is a trust decision.
Ping64’s integrated advantages in supply chain collaboration scenarios are reflected in three “linkages.”
1. Policy linkage. The sensitivity level of a file at the storage stage automatically determines its approval policy and control strength at the outbound stage. The compliance status of an endpoint at the admission stage automatically affects its permission to initiate outbound requests. These policies are centrally configured in the unified policy center, taking effect across the entire network from a single configuration, avoiding policy conflicts and coverage blind spots across multiple systems.
2. Data linkage. The user identity initiating the outbound transfer comes from the unified identity system, the endpoint compliance status comes from the endpoint security management module, the file sensitivity level comes from the content identification engine, the outbound records come from the approval process, and the tracing identifiers come from the watermark system. This information is automatically correlated when an outbound request is initiated, without the need for cross-system queries. Every flow of a file from creation to outbound forms a complete evidence chain in the unified audit center.
3. Audit linkage. Administrators can enter a file fingerprint or user account to simultaneously retrieve all relevant records for that file or person—storage location, outbound records, approval records, and tracing identifiers—without switching between multiple systems. Transmission records are stored in association with endpoint operation logs, screen recordings, and content inspection records, forming a complete, coherent, and tamper-proof evidence chain.
For file exchanges with wafer fabs and packaging and testing plants, Ping64 also supports controlled outbound formats: files are transmitted in encrypted form, and the recipient needs to open them in a specified environment. Upon opening, it automatically connects to the Ping64 verification server for identity verification and permission checks. Files cannot be forwarded, copied, or saved as other formats, ensuring the secure flow of core process parameters in the supply chain.
VIII. From “Post-Mortem Regret” to “Full-Process Traceability”
The most common dilemma faced by security teams in semiconductor companies is: after a leak incident occurs, they can confirm that “the file was leaked,” but cannot answer “who took the file out, at what time, and through what method.” Without a continuous, reviewable evidence chain, accountability and retrospective analysis are difficult to implement.
Ping64’s leak tracing capability restores outbound behavior into traceable, filterable, and reviewable audit events. The system automatically retains interface screenshot evidence when outbound transfers occur, and distinguishes different outbound behaviors by risk level—WeCom outbound can be defined as ordinary risk, while personal WeChat, cloud drive uploads, or browser-based transfer of core drawing files can be defined as high risk. Administrators can cross-filter by endpoint, time, file name, channel, and risk level in the unified audit center to quickly locate events requiring attention.
This leap from “having logs” to “having evidence” is of particular significance for intellectual property protection in the semiconductor industry. When a core process formula is leaked, the enterprise needs to provide not just an operation log, but a complete evidence chain—who created the file, whose edits and transfers it went through, at what point it was sent out, through which channel it was sent out, whether approval was obtained at the time of outbound transfer, who the approver was, and who the recipient was. The answers to these questions together constitute a complete basis for accountability.
Conclusion
Intellectual property protection in the semiconductor industry cannot rely on employee self-discipline, nor can it rely on post-event accountability. Truly effective protection is to keep core files protected from the moment they are created, and this protection does not depend on the user’s security awareness or affect R&D efficiency.
What the Ping64 integrated office security platform provides for the semiconductor industry is precisely such a protection mechanism: content identification to determine file sensitivity levels, endpoint encryption to give files protection attributes, channel control to restrict outbound paths, approval processes to verify outbound compliance, and tracing identifiers to maintain controllability after outbound transfer. These capabilities operate collaboratively on the same platform, enabling semiconductor companies to establish a complete leak prevention closed loop from endpoint to outbound, from usage to auditing, without sacrificing R&D efficiency.
In an era where chip design is increasingly complex and supply chain collaboration is increasingly globalized, file outbound management is no longer a problem that can be remedied after the fact. Making every core file leave the enterprise environment with “safe factory” attributes may be the most pragmatic protection for intellectual property in the semiconductor industry.
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