April 4, 2013 - In December 2012 Wibu-Systems AG joined the OPC Foundation as a new active member. This is part of the strategy meant at delivering added value to the automation industry through Wibu-Systems’ security solutions. The unique values that Wibu-Systems bring to the table are: product and IP protection, protection from tampering and reverse-engineering, as well as business enablement and logistic simplification by means of flexible licensing models based on function driven software modules. Automation systems are more and more interconnected; „Industry 4.0“ usually refers to “Cyber-Physical Systems” and self-configuring machines, that are highly efficient and allow for the manufacturing of customized low volumes.
The OPC Foundation offers a standard, the “OPC UA”, which clearly defines the secure authentication of networked control systems. With its solution CodeMeter, Wibu-Systems will offer new impulse to the “Security” aspect. The certificates will be OPC UA-compliant and safely stored in the activation file CmActLicense or in the smart card-based hardware device CmDongle, thus facilitating the roll out of certificates. Stefan Hoppe, President OPC Europe, further explains: “The OPC Foundation is excited to welcome Wibu-Systems as a member, and we look forward to seeing the CodeMeter security and licensing solutions OPC UA enabled.
The CodeMeter solution is cross platform compatible making OPC UA a logical choice for Wibu-Systems.” Oliver Winzenried, CEO and founder of Wibu-Systems, adds: “Just like copy and IP protection guarantee for manufacturers’ business success, security is essential to industry automation. On the one hand it is about “Safety”, basically the measures aimed at protecting personnel and environment during machine runtime. On the other side it is “Security” that matters in order to prevent software functionality manipulation and hardware component tampering. The “OPC UA” standard provides excellent mechanisms which we further make simple and secure with our compliant CodeMeter technology.
This is the mission statement underlying our strategy: establishing CodeMeter as the security standard in the automation industry.”
