Infineon intros OPTIGA Trust authentication chip

NEUBIBERG, GERMANY: Every year, product plagiarism inflicts billions of dollars in damages to businesses. Such counterfeiting is not limited to luxury goods and lifestyle products; it also is prevalent in small electronic devices or even printer cartridges.

Infineon Technologies AG announced its new OPTIGA Trust authentication chip, which helps manufacturers of electronic accessories and replacement parts protect their businesses against damages caused by counterfeiting. Consumers benefit as well, as authentication chips can help to reduce the risk of damaging the end-device by using poorly designed pirate products.

"To meet rapidly growing market demand for authentication in electronic devices, we offer a complete solution that meets the design requirements and offers the best security standard of its class," says Juergen Spaenkuch, head of Platform Security at Infineon Technologies.

"The Infineon OPTIGA Trust solution helps manufacturers of electronic devices, accessories and replacement parts to protect their intellectual property and brands very effectively against counterfeits and to reach their high quality targets."

A small chip with great impact

OPTIGA Trust is a complete solution consisting of a chip and software that can be integrated into headphones, cartridges and electronic replacement parts to authenticate them when connected to the end-device. Thanks to OPTIGA Trust, the end-device can recognize authorized products and reject counterfeits.

The OPTIGA Trust authentication chip provides the following advantages:

* Strong cryptographic security due to asymmetric encryption (ECC Elliptic Curve Cryptography).

* Space and cost savings because a single chip replaces typical two-chip solution.

* Minimal development and integration effort; thanks to a complete solution consisting of a chip and software.

* Easy-to-integrate Single-Wire host interface.

* Small chip size makes it suitable even for small devices such as in-ear headphones.

According to the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC), product plagiarism causes damages of over $600 billion per year. ABI Research estimates that the market for authentication chips and solutions for small electronic devices and accessories, IT infrastructures and printers is expected to grow from 597 million pieces delivered in 2012 to over 1.5 billion pieces in 2018.