05.09.2018
WISeKey International Holding Ltd (SIX: WIHN) (WISeKey), a leading Swiss cybersecurity and IoT company announced today that it has fully integrated the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) chip embedded with cryptographic Root of Trust (RoT) and problem-solving Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions as part of its Vertical IoT Platform. WISeKey’s IoT cybersecurity Vertical Platform allows IoT devices to organize themselves into trusted networks based on mutual authentication, identity and integrity.
The WISeKey IoT cybersecurity Vertical Platform is producing an unprecedented amount Big Data as WISeKey IoT Microchips has an install base of over 1 billion Secure Chips since 2010 in virtually all IoT sectors (autonomous cars, smart cities, drones, anti-counterfeiting, smart lights, servers, mobile phones, etc.). Big Data collected from IoT devices can help WISeKey customers detect and predict future behavior and optimize productivity across industries through predictive maintenance on equipment and machinery.
As the rapid expansion of connected devices and VaultIC chips connected to the IoT continues, the sheer volume of data being created by them will increase to a mind-boggling level. This data will hold extremely valuable insight into what’s working well or what’s not – pointing out conflicts that arise and providing high-value insight into new business risks and opportunities as correlations and associations are made.
During 2018, WISeKey has continued its transformation and evolved into a major player in the IoT, cybersecurity, AI and Blockchain market by fully integrating its cybersecurity and Semiconductors business with add-on acquisitions, and through the development of new IoT IP and patents. In just one year, WISeKey has aggregated over 46 IoT patent families (more than 200 patents in total) to its portfolio (https://www.wisekey.com/patents/) required to power the OISTE/WISeKey RoT into IoT embedded devices with problem-solving AI solutions. For WISeKey, adding to its patent portfolio and intellectual property is key to ensuring that the company will remain a major player in the IoT Industry for years to come, as the company continues to focus its efforts on integrating unique technology that is differentiated, protected and hard to reproduce based on tangible scientific discoveries or engineering innovations.
The IoT Industry is a game changer new business segment for WISeKey. An estimated 50 billion IoT devices are expected to be connected by 2020, while world’s population is estimated to grow to 6.8 billion; thus, there will be more than 7 IoT devices per person connected to the internet by 2020. As a result, it is anticipated that this year already the number of IoT devices will surpass the number of mobile devices.
By 2021, it is expected 1.8 billion PCs, 8.6 billion mobile devices, and 15.7 billion IoT devices; by 2035, the amount of data usage is expected to grow more than 2,400 times, from 1 exabyte to 2.3 zettabytes. A huge and increasing amount of sensitive data that will need to be protected by the IoT chips (such as the ones produced by WISeKey) will be interchanged between connected devices and back-end servers, allowing companies to provide users with new type of applications. These applications will be designed to offer increased control over the use of resources, improve efficiency in power grids, optimize processing of information in industrial environments, secure autonomous vehicles, provide better and higher quality healthcare services and personalized experience for shopping or leisure, among others.
This new technology enables IoT connected devices which can provide a recognized identity and a valid integrity report to communicate with peer devices within the community. WISeKey offers a range of contact and contactless secure microcontrollers that share consistent secure 8-/16-bit RISC CPU performance, strong security mechanisms, and enhanced crypto engines to optimize performance and power consumption. The products also provide high-density, low-power EEPROM technologies. Designed to meet the most stringent security requirements, many of these products are EAL5+ Common Criteria security-certified.
This new capability will enable authenticated sensor data. Currently, most IoT devices are not built with embedded secure systems, which makes these devices vulnerable to exploits. By integrating AI into the IoT hardware and platform, objects connected to the Vertical Platform can develop their own cybersecurity behavior and make smarter and safer decisions.
Objects secured with these IoT chips produce a huge amount of Big Data that when analyzed with AI can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens. The WISeKey platform allows the IoT device equipped with these chips to send authenticated data to the cloud using a dual factor authentication at the device level. Imagine a smartcard sending authenticated data of each component of the car to predict when these parts will require maintenance and to digitally sign all the logs required to prove that service was provided. This platform which can be used in different industrial applications allows optimized productivity across industries through predictive maintenance on equipment and machinery, creates truly smart homes with connected appliances and provides critical communication between devices including self-driving cars and smart homes. The possibilities that IoT brings to the table are endless.
WISeKey’s technology creates a platform that helps connected devices to become intelligent devices that can learn from attacks, defend themselves, and transfer this intelligence to other devices in the network.
Additionally, WISeKey’s technology provides smaller IoT manufacturers that do not have the resources or expertise to perform thorough security analysis of their products will the ability to adopt this platform, reducing the number of unprotected products that are released to consumers.
Carlos Moreira, founder and chief executive of WISeKey said: “This new platform opens up many possibilities for improving the overall security functionalities and creating new business processes by taking advantage of the world of digital identification at the object level, which once combined with Big Data allows us to gather and process all available information and generate actionable insights.”
Mr. Moreira added, “This innovative technology offers a full integration of several key security elements on the chip instead of installing and testing these security elements separately on the device. The integration reduces the size of the chip, lowers the cost and increases the level of security as no one can externally access and manipulate the integrity of these chips. The ability to authenticate and remotely manage millions of networked, automated devices and equipment is becoming pervasive from factory floors, to hospital operating rooms, to residential homes including billions of objects and devices from refrigerators, watches, wearables to wine bottles – everything that can connect and communicate via the Internet.”
These massively deployed connected objects are facing regular attacks hence generating a large need for trusted end-to-end cybersecurity solutions. This problem is affecting billions of people and IoT devices worldwide, and manufactures of these devices could be forced or incentivized to spend money to make their devices secure, as regulators might impose liabilities on them.
“It’s been one year since our R&D teams joined forces to integrate our chip technology within the WISeKey IoT platform. The feedback and support we are getting from various major players in the IoT ecosystem to whom we have presented our offer, including network operators, device manufacturers, data integrators, and AI technology providers, has been amazing. There is a consensus among them that security breach is a massive problem and safe and reliable solutions are needed. They all acknowledge that our Root-to-Chip platform is the right solution to efficiently resolve these problems,” added Bernard Vian, General Manager of WISeKey Semiconductors.
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