SandGrain authentication platform for life cycle asset management and brand protection.
Trusted authentication of electronics in capital equipment is an important pillar to realize the objectives of the Circular Economy. Life cycle secure authentication of critical parts throughout the full life cycle up to and including end-of-life is good for business for both equipment manufacturers and their customers.
One of the major challenges for companies selling complex machines e.g. equipment for medical, industrial or office applications, but also cars, vans, trucks and planes – is to have a reliable and up to date configuration overview of its hardware and software components in these machines and, if possible, in real time. To allow this, two conditions are required:
- A reliable, immutable identity linked to the hardware sub-components (in all practical cases the many Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) inside the machines).
- Connection to a central database, making the equipment and its PCBs effectively part of the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT).
Like the consumer IoT, also these professional asset management applications are struggling with the same problem: although PCBs and modules inside complex equipment are obviously identified by some unique labelling, this is mostly still based on paper labels or not-connected tags. This makes it impossible to remotely analyse the machine configuration, which can only be done on the spot by scanning the labels. For advanced asset and configuration management, on-line (or off-line) connections to the equipment end nodes (the PCBs!) are required. This is where the SandGrain authentication solution comes in!