WISeKey Joins the Hyperledger Global Community

WISeKey, a leading cybersecurity IoT company, announced that is has joined Hyperledger, the multi-venture, multi-stakeholder effort hosted by the Linux Foundation. Hyperledger is an open source community focused on developing a suite of stable frameworks, tools and libraries for enterprise-grade blockchain deployment.

Carlos Moreira, WISeKey’s Founder and CEO noted, “We are excited to join the Hyperledger community, and we look forward to working with its members to facilitate the rapid and global adaptation of blockchain-based solutions. WISeKey’s technology supports an ecosystem of connected devices and creates a secured platform to help these devices become intelligent and trusted, able to identify, authenticate and verify each other, gather and analyze data and then safely share with other devices. As a pioneer of blockchain technologies, we are committed to continue our journey of creating cutting-edge applications designed to solve peoples’ problems, transform businesses and create a better world.”

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“There are many promising opportunities for leveraging blockchain alongside IoT,” said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. “WISeKey’s understanding of IoT use cases and focus on building secure, decentralized platforms for connected devices will add welcomed expertise to our ecosystem. We look forward to WISeKey’s contributions to the Hyperledger community and the larger efforts to drive convergence of emerging technologies.”

WISeKey’s blockchain-based solutions aim to override the need for a central authority by distributing information previously held in a centralized repository across a network of participating nodes. While blockchain is not owned by one individual or organization, anyone with an internet connection (and access, in the case of private blockchains) can make use of it, help maintain and verify it. When a transaction is made on a blockchain, it is added to a group of transactions, known as “blocks.” Each block of transactions is added to the database in a chronological, immutable chain. Each block is stamped with a unique cryptographic code, which ensures that records are not counterfeited or changed. The blockchain approach lacks legal validity in most jurisdictions, which only recognize the digital signatures as equally valid that manuscript signatures when generated using traditional PKI technology.

A user-controlled digital identity typically starts with a number, unique to an individual, that is associated with a public key for which the user has the private key issued by the OISTE/WISeKey Crypto Graphic RootKey. The WISeID Network is a most deployed standard for digital identity operating since 1998 by a non-profit organization – OISTE.ORG – designed to bring the neutrality, trust, consent, personal control, and ease-of-use of Digital IDs to the Internet.

A Root of Trust (RoT) is a source that can always be trusted within a cryptographic system. A principal example is a Trusted Certification Authority (CA) which generates digital certificates that can be used for legally binding signed electronic transactions. The traditional PKI does not fit well with the heterogeneous blockchain distributed trust model that leverages the existing trust domains and bridges them to create end-to-end trust between them without relying on any common RoT.

Earlier this year, WISeKey established the Trust Protocol Association (the Association) aiming to create a new Trust Protocol for the Internet by combining traditional Cryptographic Trust Models with permissioned blockchain transactions through strong authentication provided by the OISTE WISeKey RoT, a new Global Trust platform and an ecosystem of governmental, technology and business partners, each representing a certification node with the possibility of having multiple certifications nodes per country.

The Association will promote the use of blockchain technologies internationally, facilitate the rapid adaptation and on-boarding of blockchain-based solutions, and foster stronger collaboration between the public, private and academic sectors. The  founding members of the Association, which includes reputable organizations such as the State of Geneva, The BRI Blockchain Research Institute, Oracle, WeCan, Aurachain, Bilwee, OISTE, and WISeKey, have created a number of interconnected Blockchain Centers of Excellence around the world.

The combination of RoT with blockchain generates a new Trust Protocol in order to allow the blockchain to scale trusted transactions with embedded security, ensuring that each transaction submitted to the blockchain is digitally signed using keys that are trusted by the RoT and combining a vertical trust process verified by a reputable Third Trusted Party with the inherent decentralized trust provided by the blockchain.

This dual Trust Model solves one of the biggest challenges for the internet, which is to bridge the currently fragmented trust domains including existing, incompatible national RoTs used by many governments. By combining RoT with blockchain, our innovative Trust Protocol enables a wide range of use cases and business models that simply are not possible with using just current blockchain-based solutions.

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One concrete application on the use of this new Trust Protocol is WISeID Trusted Distributed Ledger Technology of Identity used to store the identity of objects and peoples and offers connected objects the ability to identify, authenticate and verify each other with a digital certificate. During each interaction, the Blockchain of Identity verifies and validates each digital certificate to secure the interaction such as the recently announced in collaboration with Bilwee, an Argentina-based automatic collection and payment management platform company, which provides Argentinian companies (soon European too) the ability to maintain cash flow and liquidity through the cancellation of debtor invoices.  By using WISeKey’s WISeID digital identification and IBM’s blockchain security platform powered by Hyperledger Fabric companies are able to protect their transactions by uploading invoices to the cloud and safely completing payments which can then be canceled between debtors and creditors.

Connected objects secured with WISeKey’s 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.

Additionally, WISeKey’s technology provides smaller IoT manufacturers that do not have the resources or expertise to perform thorough security analysis of their products with the ability to adopt this platform, reducing the number of unprotected products that are released to consumers.

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