WISeKey Showcases Innovative Embedded IoT Systems to Securely Connect Products to the Metaverse at the Embedded World 2022 Exhibition

July 11, 2022

Press Release

WISeKey Showcases Innovative Embedded IoT Systems to Securely Connect Products to the Metaverse at the Embedded World 2022 Exhibition.

WISeKey International Holding Ltd., a leading global cybersecurity, AI and IoT company announced that it participated at the Embedded World 2022 Exhibition which took place in Nuremberg, Germany from June 21-23. The events focused on introducing the latest trends and technical innovations in the field of embedded technologies such as IoT and electronic systems security and brought together visitors with the technologies inspiring the future.

Apart from industry leading IoT solutions and Semiconductors, WISeKey showcased how its semiconductors are used to protect brands against counterfeiting and connect their products to the Metaverse using its WISe.ART NFT platform. WISeKey is providing this technology to luxury brands to protect high end watches and connect their owners to the Metaverse. The WISeKey embedded secure element provides a full certified history of the luxury good, from manufacturing to owners, which solves the traceability complexity of these products. Moreover, the silicon used to manufacture the mechanical parts offers additional useful characteristics such as shape memory effect, thermal stability, etc.

Counterfeiting is a huge and growing issue for the luxury industry. Not only the original manufacturers' revenues and reputation are at stake, but the end customers are also impacted (quality issues, reliability, etc.). One of the solutions to fight counterfeiting is to digitally identify and authenticate these goods. For instance, a secure element with unique secret keys can be placed in or on a watch to prove the watch's identity, the same way an electronic passport proves a passenger's identity. For some luxury industries, electronic components are very badly perceived since they can waste the overall impression of luxury.

Today, there are no effective ways to mechanically and efficiently secure a piece of silicon (a secure element) in the (often metal) environment of a watch or of another luxury good. Therefore, such a secure element could easily be moved from an authentic watch to a fake one, or from a low-cost model to an expensive one. Similarly, an electronic passport with no biometric records could be stolen and used by anybody.

The secure element used to digitally prove the identity of a luxury good (watch, etc.) is no longer an external "dirty" part that is artificially affixed onto/into the product. It is fully integrated and becomes a constitutive part of the product. The overall luxury perception is intact.

This secure element is no longer an external part that could be moved to another product, it intrinsically becomes part of the product it protects, like a DNA signature. This seriously reinforces the proof of identity/authenticity. Since the secure element is intrinsically integrated into a piece of the good to be protected, it does not require any specific handling. The traditional fully hand-made assembly of the good is still possible and the craft environment of luxury is respected.

The authenticity of the luxury good can be easily proven by checking the digital identity (secret keys) contained in the embedded secure element through standard cryptographic transactions between this "chip" and an external authentication device. Various interfaces are possible (contact and contactless). The mechanical part that will be included in the luxury good to be protected is laser cut in a piece of silicon that embeds the secure element which was previously prepared in a regular semiconductor factory. The embedded secure element is a regular secure microcontroller that provides the communication interfaces required by the application (contact or contactless) and that can be powered by contact or by induction. The embedded secure element is provisioned with the digital identity (secret keys) once the luxury good is univocally initially authenticated by the brand. Depending on the physical integration and use case, the secure element can be accessed for authentication or traceability either through the casing of the good or after having opened it for inspection or maintenance.

WISeKey's NFT technology creates a Watch Birth Certificates, digital identities which are analogous to birth certificates and can be converted into NFTs. The Watch Birth Certificate is signed, or "certified" by a trusted authority and contains basic information such as date & time of manufacture (birth), company (parents), and type of product. This digital identity, used throughout the watch lifetime, allows the watch to become a "Trusted Object" of the Internet, prove its identity and provide verifiable data.

The Watch Birth Certificate is based on a cryptographic public-private key pair that is unique to each IoT device. The public key for this key pair is part of the certificate and can be freely distributed, while the private key is used whenever the IoT device needs to verify its identity or to sign data to ensure cryptographic integrity. It is the private key that represents the essence of the identity of the IoT device.

About WISeKey

WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems for people and objects using Blockchain, AI and IoT respecting the Human as the Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the pervasive computing shaping today's Internet of Everything. WISeKey IoT has an install base of over 1.6 billion microchips in virtually all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers, mobile phones, crypto tokens etc.). WISeKey is uniquely positioned to be at the edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens.

Our technology is Trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey's Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust ("RoT") provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people.

For more information, visit: www.wisekey.com.