WISeKey and INSIDE Secure to target counterfeit luxury goods

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND & AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE: WISeKey and INSIDE Secure 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 $600 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."