News
INSIDE Secure and WISeKey join forces to target counterfeit luxury goods
INSIDE Secure and WISeKey today announced a partnership to create a
new breakthrough evolution of the WISeAuthentic solution suite which
provides protection against counterfeiting, offers powerful sales
monitoring and direct marketing capabilities. WISeAuthentic employs
time-tested security technologies to help luxury brands ensure the
authenticity of their goods from the supply chain to the end customer
and beyond.
The new generation of the authentication solution, which
will be developed and marketed jointly by the two companies, will
provide a convenient way for retailers and consumers to verify the
authenticity of luxury goods at the point of sale, using smartphones
enabled with Near Field Communication technology (NFC). WISeKey will
employ INSIDE Secure's new VaultIC (TM)150 security module, which
combines tamper-proof security with a wireless interface that
communicates with a smartphone or other NFC reader to determine the
product's authenticity.
"Our WISeAuthentic service is already at work defending luxury
brands in their fight against counterfeiters, to monitor their
sellout operations, and establish a lifelong bond with customers. Our
partnership with INSIDE Secure will be a major step towards the
future, scaling our solution to store an unforgeable digital
certificate of authenticity in formats other than just smartcards by
taking advantage of the power of NFC technology.
Today's smartphones allow us to offer new value added services that luxury brands can offer their clientele, making it easier than ever before to prove a
product's authenticity," said Carlos Moreno, vice president, digital
brand management at WISeKey. "This kind of solution could be applied
to many industries in addition to luxury goods, including gemstones,
fine wines, pharmaceutical and medical products, and aeronautical and
automotive parts."
WISeKey's digital brand protection solutions are based on proven
public key infrastructure (PKI) technology that creates a
cryptographically secured digital certificate of authenticity
containing the product's identity code. The NFC tag ID will be
impossible to replicate, and the solution will be available at a
small fraction of the cost of sales lost from counterfeits. The IACC
(International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition) estimates that brand
holders lose approximately USD600 billion of revenue annually due to
counterfeiting.
"The NFC interface is key in this application because it enables the
strong cryptographic capabilities of the VaultIC to operate on induced
power, allowing it to be employed in products like handbags or wine
bottles that do not have their own built-in power source," said David
Richetto, marketing manager for embedded security products and
applications manager for secure ICs at INSIDE Secure. "The elliptic
curve asymmetric cryptography this system uses offers the strongest
protection available to combat counterfeiters, yet allows a compact,
cost-effective design, and we can use it to create NFC tags small
enough to be available in a variety of form factors to accommodate
the shape of various products."
"NFC is now rapidly being adopted by all the major smartphone
makers, providing an ideal platform consumers can use for a broad
range of NFC applications, including the ability to verify that the
goods they purchase are genuine," said Christian Fleutelot, general
manager of the VaultIC secure microcontroller solutions business unit
at INSIDE Secure. "Our single-chip NFC security module can embed
banking-level security directly within products cost effectively to
protect brands, and by partnering with WISeKey, we can deliver a
complete authentication solution that's easy for retailers and
consumers to use."