04-08 May 2020: WIBU-SYSTEMS AG

1) Who are your main users?

Wibu-Systems and its CodeMeter flagship family of protection, licensing, and security solutions are dedicated to meeting the needs of software developers and intelligent device manufacturers in their constant effort to capitalize on their digital assets, be it software, firmware, or sensitive data. High-profile multinational corporations as well as innovative small-to-medium-sized engineering enterprises that form the backbone of global economies and specialize in sophisticated data and software-driven areas of business all favor Wibu-Systems’ hardware, software, and cloud-based products and professional services. CodeMeter technology is used by a very diverse clientele ranging from independent software houses to advanced medical and life science technology vendors and household names of the financial sector. Even more notably, Wibu-Systems equips the world-renowned factory automation vendors that have embraced Industry 4.0 principles with the tools that enable the core functionalities of the future Industrial Internet of Things: protection for source code and data against piracy and reverse engineering, control over features, functions, and usage through versatile license and entitlement management, and security for machine-to-machine communications and digital transactions.

2) What cybersecurity/privacy challenges do your solutions address?

Building on a heritage of three decades in licensing and IP protection, Wibu-Systems’ products and services have expanded to cover an extensive range of monetization applications via the integrity protection of technical know-how. Using tough encryption, including award-winning proprietary technology, and intelligently designed workflows, Wibu-Systems’ CodeMeter addresses cybersecurity from several angles: Safeguarding against theft and manipulation, ensuring control over digital assets for their legitimate owners, and enabling smart and secure monetization concepts and novel business models for IP-driven enterprises. Developers benefit from the holistic protection and licensing capabilities of CodeMeter Protection Suite, including top-notch encryption mechanisms for their code on a variety of platforms, and the ease of managing licenses and user rights with the web-based CodeMeter License Central. Flexible licensing options enable the paradigm shift from hardware to software, with usage or time-bound licenses, the ability to upsell and activate features remotely, and a complete array of servitization factors. Users can choose from a range of industry-grade dongles offering safe license containers and advanced security features, relying on built-in smart card chips for tamper-proof encryption and the sandboxed execution of sensitive protected code, or they can turn to software or fully cloud-based license containers.

3) How do your solutions improve the lives of your users?

Wibu-Systems is pursuing a vision of cybersecurity becoming a ubiquitous feature of connected industry and end users’ digital lives with security capabilities built in by design and working by default. With its commitment to interoperability with a large portfolio of solutions for any device, software platform, license container type, and back office system, and a comfortable user experience, the company intends to create a security infrastructure with the smallest technical and procedural footprint possible to lower the adoption threshold and make cybersecurity a standard feature of connected life – reliable, effective, and working out of the box. This is exemplified best by CodeMeter Certificate Vault, the digital certificate management solution using the rationale behind Wibu-Systems’ established licensing system. Just as licensing is made easier for PC users and the operators of smart factories with software-driven manufacturing capabilities alike, CodeMeter Certificate Vault uses a cloud-based certificate management and allocation process and the proven security of CodeMeter containers – available in hardware, software, and cloud formats – to both simplify the use of certificates and remove the security vulnerabilities inherent in current practices. Essential for authentication in digital communication and smart manufacturing networks, certificates are now as easy to use as software licenses.