Counterfeit Electronic Components: Understanding the Risk

You may have heard talk in the news lately regarding counterfeit electronic components making it into the US military supply chain. The U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) recently reported in the Counterfeit Electronic Parts in the Defense Department Supply Chain hearing held on November 17, 2011, 1,800 cases of suspected counterfeit components that went into more than 1 million individual products. If you consider this number for the military, we can only imagine the number of counterfeits in our commercial yet high reliability products, such as life support or other critical systems. If you are the person within your electronics-based company who must perform risk analyses, counterfeiting is not a new concern, yet many do not realize just how good counterfeiters have become at their "trade"....