Secure Thingz, Intrinsic-ID Partner on ‘Supply Chain of Trust’

Secure Thingz, an IoT development and security firm, has launched a partnership with Intrinsic ID, which provides Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) security IP.

“Establishing a supply chain of trust has never been more important as products and devices share sensitive information and provide vital services,” the companies said in a news release on Wednesday (Dec. 15). “With this partnership, companies will be able to develop products with unique identities and integrated confidentiality.”

The companies say this can be carried through the entire lifetime of a product using secure microcontroller execution environment and an immutable boot path to a root of trust boot manager that will verify subsequent software ahead of execution.

This can then be carried through the entire development, manufacturing, and lifetime of a product through a “secure microcontroller execution environment and an immutable boot path to a root of trust boot manager” that verifies subsequent software before execution, the release states.

PUFs are vital to several modern devices, with top vendors relying on them to provide IoT security in their microcontrollers, said Haydn Povey, CEO of Secure Thingz. “Together with Intrinsic ID, we will enable this critical capability to be integrated into a wide array of embedded systems to deliver protection of provisioned data, together with the creation of root keys,” he said.

“We believe PUF technology is fundamental for the security of embedded applications in the IoT environment,” said Pim Tuyls, CEO of Intrinsic-ID. “Secure Thingz is a key player in delivering solutions to secure the IoT, and this partnership will enable and support an accelerated adoption of PUF technology, providing a key differentiator for delivering chain-of-trust implementation across the embedded marketplace.”

Read more: 65% of Consumer Electronics Returns Occur During Setup

PYMNTS looked at some of the challenges that come with supporting IoT devices earlier this year in a conversation with Tsiki Naftaly, co-founder and co-CEO of Copilot. Naftaly said it takes consumers an average of 12 minutes to set up a new product, “and in those 12 minutes, which are critical for product success, there are specific points where many people fail.”

Copilot’s research found that 65% of returns occur at the unboxing and installation stages, while data from Juniper Research cited by the company showed that the typical Internet of Things (IoT) consumer experiences an average of 1.5 performance problems a day.