April 23, 2014 - Wibu-Systems GbR (now known as Wibu-Systems AG) was founded by Oliver Winzenried and Marcellus Buchheit in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1989, with its goal to deliver secure and easy-to-use software licensing, security and protection technologies. The company is now recognized as one of the worldwide leaders in the field. In addition to protecting conventional software applications and new cloud service offerings, Wibu-Systems is committed to further strengthening protection measures and policies against piracy and malicious attacks in industrial automation processes.
Wibu-Systems has grown to more than 100 people, including 70 employees at its headquarters in Karlsruhe, Germany, and 30 among its subsidiaries in the U.S. and China, and its sales offices in Benelux, France, Great Britain, Portugal and Spain. The company's WibuKey protection technology, initially developed in 1989, as well as its flagship CodeMeter solution, is used in diverse applications such as the protection of CAD suites, media systems, computer games, medical devices and automation systems. Several million computer programs are currently protected by Wibu-Systems' hardware protection devices.
Throughout its history, Wibu-Systems has pioneered and commercialized many new form factors and protection processes. For example, the company launched the world's first hardware protection for the PCMCIA interface in 1993 and the smallest USB dongle in 2011. Wibu-Systems is the only global manufacturer to openly challenge hackers. In several international Hacker's Contests since 2001, participants were unable to crack the Wibu-Systems' protected software. In 2008, the company further extended its CodeMeter protection tool to support new industrial development platforms, such as Windows Embedded, Real Time Linux, VxWorks and CODESYS.
The CodeMeter hardware protection technology was also engineered to meet the special requirements of industrial environments, such as reliable operation over a broad temperature range and under condensing humidity conditions, high quality SLC mass storage, stable EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) properties, and easy retrofit into existing machines, plants and equipment via several interface options. With these integral properties, CodeMeter is used by manufacturers for a variety of applications:
- Integrity protection of embedded software to detect and prevent tampering and cyber attacks
- Copy protection of embedded software against counterfeiting of devices, machines and even whole production plants
- Protection of production know-how against reverse-engineering
- Flexible activation of device functions, resulting in the enablement of new business models
- Protection of production data
Marcel Buchheit, co-founder and CEO of Wibu-Systems USA, stated: "The position we hold as one of today's worldwide market leaders is the result of the interaction between our creative employees and enthusiastic solution-oriented customers, as well as the cooperation with our global partners. While we are proud to celebrate our 25th anniversary this year, our mission does not stop here. With an increasing awareness of the security and safety needs for Industry 4.0 related fields, such as IoT (Internet of Things) and M2M (machine-to-machine communication), we will continue to develop new, innovative solutions for our customers."
