WISeKey Combines Interoperable Centrally-Managed PKI with Blockchain-Rooted Trust

WISeKey Combines Interoperable Centrally-Managed PKI with Blockchain-Rooted Trust

In 2020, WISeKey joined Hyperledger, a 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.

ZUG, Switzerland – February 19, 2020 – WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN, NASDAQ: WKEY), a leading cybersecurity IoT, blockchain company, today announced that it has reinforced its architecture with a decentralized trust, offering security at least as strong as existing blockchain-based naming systems, yet without sacrificing the flexibility and performance typically found in centralized Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs).

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 Root of Trusts (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 by using just current blockchain-based solutions.  This integration is being deployed with clients operating in sectors such as: secure sharing of medical data, music royalties tracking, cross-border payments, real-time IoT operating systems, personal identity security, anti-money laundering tracking system, supply chain and logistics monitoring, voting mechanism, advertising insights, original content creation, cryptocurrency exchange, real estate processing platform, among others.  

The combination of RoT with blockchain generates a new Trust Protocol by allowing 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.

One concrete application of this new Trust Protocol is WISeID Trusted Distributed Ledger Technology of Identity which provides a secure way to store the identity of objects and people 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.