How to limit shared design data, protecting IP and securing the manufacturing handoff.

Last month’s column on intelligent data transfer discussed how PCB design data have evolved from unintelligent, fragmented formats like Gerber to an intelligent, integrated, single-file exchange through IPC-2581. We talked about what intelligent data means – design data that retains their full context, hierarchy and relationships throughout the product lifecycle – and why the industry needs to move away from legacy Gerber-based packages.

This month, we take a deeper look at how intellectual property (IP) is protected using IPC-2581 and how its function mode capability enables secure and efficient data sharing (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Manufacturing is a target for IP theft.

Secure and complete design data are critical to building, assembling and testing printed circuit boards. As inspection and manufacturing technologies advance, partners require greater design detail to enable automation and ensure quality. This expanded data access, however, has heightened the risk of intellectual property theft, tampering and deliberate insertion of vulnerabilities during data handoff – incidents that have compromised products, brands and businesses. Despite these risks, many OEMs still rely on outdated, fragmented and insecure methods of sharing design data with manufacturing partners. What the industry needs is an intelligent, electronic and secure mechanism for controlled, bidirectional data exchange – a capability uniquely enabled by IPC-2581.

IPC-2581, which has been in existence since 2004, has steadily matured and is now adopted by leading design and manufacturing companies worldwide. Virtually all major PCB fabrication and assembly tool vendors support IPC-2581.

A complex, multi-stage threat to design IP. Intellectual property theft in electronics manufacturing rarely occurs as a single event. It often unfolds through a sequence of deliberate and coordinated actions targeting multiple stages of the product lifecycle – from design creation to shipment (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Data exposure can leave design teams vulnerable.

The first step in this attack chain begins with unauthorized access to design data. Once the design files are compromised, proprietary circuit intelligence, layout rules and component selections can be extracted to steal core technology or produce counterfeit subassemblies indistinguishable from genuine products.

The second stage focuses on manufacturing data. Here, the attacker manipulates the bill of materials (BoM) or replaces components with spyware-enabled substitutes. In some cases, malicious actors inject altered firmware or modify traceability data, making it appear as though the compromised parts originated from legitimate sources.

Finally, the third and often overlooked target is shipping and logistics data. By intercepting or substituting product shipments, attackers can swap authentic goods with counterfeits or erase and alter shipment records and device identifiers to conceal their activity.

This multilayered sequence – from design to manufacturing to shipping – illustrates the complex nature of IP-related attacks in today’s interconnected ecosystem. It underscores the urgent need for secure, intelligent and traceable data exchange standards like IPC-2581, which can help organizations maintain control and integrity across design data exchange with manufacturing partners.

Protecting design IP. Broadly speaking, the data in a design include the following categories. The design data in an ECAD/PCB design tool is very intelligent. Gerber-based packages include all this information disaggregated and are not useful without all the data:

• Padstack definitions
• Bill of materials and approved vendor list (AVL)
• Component packages and assembly data
• Stackup and material properties
• Board outline (profile)
• Solder mask, paste and silkscreen layers
• Drilling and routing information
• Copper and dielectric layers
• Logical and physical netlists
• DfX measurement and documentation layers.

When you send out Gerber-based packages, you are essentially sending the entire design – all layer data, drill files and auxiliary notes – to every manufacturing partner. This all-or-nothing approach exposes more data than necessary and poses potential IP and competitive risks.

IPC-2581 addresses this challenge with its function mode, which allows design teams to send only the subset of data required for a specific manufacturing process – whether fabrication, assembly, test or stencil creation. This capability ensures that partners receive only what they need to execute their function, no more.

For example, a fabricator can receive copper, drill and stackup data, but not the BoM or component placement details. This controlled distribution dramatically reduces data exposure and improves both data security and process efficiency.

Export flexibility. Function mode is one of the most powerful and underutilized features of IPC-2581. It enables design organizations to create and export purpose-specific subsets of the full digital product model.

These subsets can correspond to manufacturing stages such as:

• Fabrication – Data needed to fabricate the bare PCB (copper, drill, stackup, solder mask, etc.)
• Assembly – Data required for component placement and assembly (BOM, rotation, centroid, etc.)
• Test – Information for test fixture and electrical testing (netlists, impedance data)
• Stencil – Stencil layer and solder paste pattern data
• DfX (Design for Excellence) – Measurement and validation data for manufacturing readiness
• Stackup exchange – Material, dielectric and geometry data for impedance control and simulation alignment
• BOM/AVL – This includes bill of materials and approved vendor information
• User-defined – Fully customizable configuration to meet internal or partner-specific requirements (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Function Modes in IPC-2581 enables users to selectively send what is needed for a particular manufacturing step.

Each function mode produces a complete, validated, machine-readable dataset tailored to that specific manufacturing task. This allows seamless collaboration without compromising other design data or revealing unnecessary details.

Among all the function modes, stackup exchange plays a pivotal role in ensuring first-time-right manufacturing.

A PCB’s electrical performance, impedance control and signal integrity are tightly tied to its stackup definition: the materials, dielectric constants, layer thicknesses, copper weights and sequencing of conductive and nonconductive layers.

With legacy Gerber data, this information was typically sent as “electronic paper” – PDF, Excel or email instructions – leading to ambiguity and misinterpretation. Worse is that the designers must manually reenter information into their CAD tools, increasing the chances of errors and respins.

IPC-2581, on the other hand, captures the stackup in a structured XML format that is both machine-readable and correlated to the design database. This ensures that:

• The manufacturer receives precise layer and material specifications.
• The impedance models and material references remain consistent between design and fabrication.
• Changes or substitutions in dielectric materials are traceable and version-controlled.
• The designer’s intellectual property (signal models, stack rules, etc.) remains protected since only the required subset is transmitted.

The result is a robust, digital handshake between design and manufacturing; no PDFs, no retyping and no guesswork.

Flow customization features. Beyond the predefined function modes, IPC-2581 offers a user-defined mode, permitting companies to fully customize the exported dataset based on internal process flows or proprietary tool requirements. Such granular control is essential in today’s environment of globalized, multi-vendor supply chains, where selective transparency can protect sensitive IP while enabling seamless collaboration.

Whether exporting for fabrication, assembly or stackup verification, IPC-2581 generates a single XML-based file containing all correlated information for that manufacturing step. Unlike legacy multi-file handoffs, this single-file exchange:

• Preserves data integrity between design and manufacturing
• Prevents version mismatches
• Enables automation and digital thread continuity
• Reduces time-to-manufacture and risk of error.

A secure digital thread. The combined use of IPC-2581 and IPC-CFX establishes the foundation for an ultra-secure, intelligent and fully connected design-to-manufacturing data exchange. Together, these IPC standards enable a bidirectional digital flow of design information – including DFx feedback – across design, manufacturing engineering and production systems, while maintaining full protection of intellectual property at every stage.

IPC-2581, introduced in 2004, defines a digital product model (DPMX) that consolidates the complete build intent into a single, machine-readable XML file. When integrated with IPC-CFX, this digital model becomes securely embedded within encrypted CFX messages, using TLS 1.2 protocols to safeguard data in transit. The result is a seamless, standards-based framework that not only enhances smart factory connectivity and traceability but also delivers assurance of IP security throughout the entire design data supply chain.

Protecting design IP is crucial in the PCB design-to-manufacturing handoff. With IPC-2581’s function-mode framework, designers can securely and precisely share a subset of their design data with their manufacturing partners, reducing the risk of IP theft significantly. This enables the PCB design and manufacturing industry to move toward a smarter, safer and more efficient data handoff ecosystem.

The future of PCB manufacturing collaboration is not just digital; it’s intelligent, secure and built on IPC-2581.

Hemant Shah is chairman of the IPC-2581 Consortium (ipc2581.com). Shah led the effort to create an industry-wide consortium of design and supply chain companies to get IPC-2581 – the standard for transferring PCB design data to manufacturing – adopted.

He spent 20 years at Cadence as product manager for various PCB design products. Shah also led the industry adoption of the IBIS-AMI algorithmic modeling standard. Prior to joining Cadence, Shah worked at Xynetix and Intergraph. He is passionate about developing and marketing leading-edge software products for PCB design.