LONDON -- ARM, Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient haveannounced the creation of a joint venture (JV) chartered with delivering secureenvironments in which to run services such as financial payments on mobileequipment including tablet computers, smart-TVs, games consoles andsmartphones.
"The new venture will combine the security operationsfrom three leading organizations," said Ben Cade, CEO of the venture, in astatement that did not name the JV.
The types of applications that would be protected by theJV's technology include mobile payments, enterprise productivity, and mobilebanking applications, as well as online commerce and premium content services,ARM (Cambridge, England) said.
The three companies are investing in a joint venture toaccelerate adoption of a common security standard based on ARM's TrustZonesecurity technology, which is included in every ARM Cortex-A family processor.All three companies will contribute assets to the new venture, includingpatents, software, people, cash and capital equipment. ARM will own 40% of the JVand Gemalto (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Giesecke & Devrient (Munich,Germany) will own 30% each.
The JV will develop a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)for smart connected devices based on TrustZone. This common, secure environmentfor software execution will utilize advanced hardware security coupled withindustry standard software interfaces, such as those from the GlobalPlatformindustry association. This secure environment will be offered to silicon,software, and equipment partners.
"The integration of the hardware, software and servicesnecessary for system-wide security has been slow," said Warren East, CEOof ARM, in a statement. "This will be of significant step in terms ofimproved consumer trust in secure transactions on connected devices," Eastadded.
In the same statement Olivier Piou, CEO of Gemalto, said:"Our combined efforts will result in the ecosystem as a whole being ableto capitalize on the built-in security architectures, especially for transientdata such as encryption keys for digital movie rentals, and reduceuncertainties for service providers wanting to launch and manage newservices."
This article was originally posted by EETimes.
