In high security systems it is often desirable to use a cryptographic operation that is in some way different from what other people are using. The choice of a different algorithm, or a secure variation of a fixed algorithm enables risk to be managed through diversification. Many classes of cryptographic attack are most efficient when implemented in bulk – the investment in setting up the cost of the attack can be shared over potentially hundreds of millions of targets. Diversification, if done correctly, may increase the difficulty or cost of such an investment.  Diversification can also protect against subtle attacks that send information to one cryptographic system and send the result to another completely independently run cryptographic system in a way that breaks the security of one or both of the systems.

Synaptic offers a range of data privacy and integrity operations that offer a diversification technique called family keying. This allows any organisation to create a proprietary variation of the cipher in a strictly defined way that does not weaken the security of the system. The family key is designed the change the cipher in a way different to the standard symmetric key. The family key does not need to be secret. Synaptic Labs' VEST cipher offers a range of family keying techniques that allow variations of the cipher to be built for a wide range of application scenarios (such as unique cipher per chip for verifying the authenticity of a device, or for increasing the cost of third parties cloning their authentication devices).  Synaptic Labs' PQSDES cipher offers family keying that is optimised to protect against subtle cross-protocol attacks.