Electronics Maker interviewed Ms Hwai Lin Khor, Head of Sales & Business Development – Digital Security Solutions, Infineon Technologies Asia-Pacific in a recent India Electronics Week Event. Infineon displayed advanced security solutions at the event. Ms Khor shares more about latest security innovations and their applications.
Tell us about Smart home security and Infineon solution for this application?
With today’s Smart Home applications more and more home devices are connected to the internet and IT security becomes more and more an issue. Smart Home devices are an attractive target for attackers, so confidentiality, integrity and authenticity must be maintained and additionally privacy protection becomes a concern. Challenge with the increase in networking in the Smart Home area, communication must be protected in order to prevent attackers manipulating data. In order to get confidential data such as cryptographic keys, device certificates or parameters secured, you only need to easily store this data on a hardware based trust anchor, where Infineon is providing the OPTIGA™ Trust family for. The OPTIGA™ Trust Anchor comes pre-provisioned with the first key pair and certificates from Infineon Common Criteria certified factory. This eliminates the need for customers to perform first key pair injection which can be costly as it requires secured premises.
The OPTIGA™ Trust family was designed to meet the challenges facing manufacturers of IoT devices like for Smart Homes appliances, home monitoring, assistances and entertainment. The OPTIGA™ Trust X for e.g. is a turnkey solution offering enhanced security for connected devices based on certified hardware based security. The OPTIGA™ Trust X evaluation and demonstration kit is a quick and easy way of getting started with IoT security. As a full turnkey solution it comes with a high-end security controller, operating system as well as a library for the main system host controller. The PC plug in board is based on a XMC4500 microcontroller and comes with software providing the user an intuitive graphical user interface. This allows users to try out the features of the OPTIGA™ Trust X such as mutual authentication, insertion of cryptographic certificates as well as secured communication.
What are your advanced Solutions for rising security demands for smart cards?
Infineon is the leading provider of security solutions. It offers tailored and ready-to-use security solutions serving a wide range of applications from smart cards to new, emerging use cases such as smart wearables and connected devices. Outstanding security expertise and innovations make Infineon the preferred security partner. This is based on industry’s broadest security solution portfolio, in-depth system competence and high customer focus for 30 years. We offer industry’s broadest portfolio of security solutions including hardware, software and services.
We provide leading security solutions for smart card applications like, payment and government identification.
Infineon’s leadership extends to embedded and mobile security applications as well as internet of things security applications like smart home, connected car, industrial automation and information and communication technology.
What you would like to highlight for Future of payments?
The future of payment is mobile, contactless and secured. Payments are going digital – with today’s users expecting a fast, convenient and often contactless experience with the option of using different form factors. In fact, contactless payment cards and “tap and go” transactions using cards, wearables or mobile devices are increasingly replacing cash and contact-based transactions.
The contactless mandates issued by VISA, MasterCard and American Express at the start of 2018 reflect their commitment to expanding the infrastructure supporting contactless and dual-interface payments. This means that more and more consumers will be able to simply and securely tap and pay.
As the leader in digital and payment security, we offer the market’s broadest portfolio of payment solutions.
What are the benefits for biometric security?
This biometric security surpasses traditional signature, magnetic stripe, chip, or embossing solutions. The sensor is embedded within the card and each cardholder’s fingerprint data is only stored within the security controller on the card itself and not under any other system for user privacy. This solution is faster than PIN based payment cards it reduces fraudulent actions, and it also has a very low false acceptance rate to FAR which is the measure of the likelihood that the biometric security system will incorrectly accept an access attempt by an unauthorized user (“I would in this case rather mention the false acceptance rate which is very low for secure solutions”). The design of the collaborative card infused a biometric secure element , an operating platform, payment applets, and proven lamination processes for manufacturing.
What is Blockchain? How to meet Blockchain security challenges?
Since its introduction, blockchain has created a tremendous buzz and has captured the attention of many, with Governments, enterprises, academic institutions, and the ever-growing blockchain community in talks on what this innovative technology can offer to society. It powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether, but can also be used to develop blockchain applications, such as logistics, energy supply, identity and voting systems shops and much more.
Blockchain stands for a new way of documenting data on the internet: Decentral by design, often hosted by millions of computers simultaneously, it creates a secured infrastructure by making data immutable and accessible to anyone. While this makes the technology inherently secure on the one hand, it also creates new pain points when interacting with humans or devices.
To interact with the blockchain, the user’s private key is both, the identity and the security credential. If the private key is lost, all assets are lost. Moreover, if the private key is stolen and hacked, the attacker has full access to all assets that allows the creation of seemingly valid transactions. Hardware-based security tokens are the most effective way against attacks and unauthorized access.
Infineon’s Blockchain Security 2Go starter kit provides a fast and easy way to build best-in-class security into a blockchain system design from scratch. Based on a security controller, it features hardware-based protection mechanisms to generate and store private keys in a secured way.
