ARM, security firms form joint venture for mobile

LONDON – ARM, Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient have announced the creation of a joint venture chartered with delivering secure environments in which to run services such as financial payments on mobile equipment including tablet computers, smart-TVs, games consoles and smartphones.

"The new venture will combine the security operations from three leading organizations," said Ben Cade, CEO of the venture, in a statement that did not name the JV.

The types of applications that would be protected by the JV's technology include mobile payments, enterprise productivity and mobile banking applications, as well as online commerce and premium content services, ARM (Cambridge, England) said.

The three companies are investing in a joint venture to accelerate adoption of a common security standard based on ARM's TrustZone security technology, which is included in every ARM Cortex-A family processor. All three companies will contribute assets to the new venture, including patents, software, people, cash and capital equipment. ARM will own 40 percent of the joint venture and Gemalto (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Giesecke & Devrient (Munich, Germany) will own 30 percent each.

The JV will develop a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) for smart connected devices based on TrustZone. This common, secure environment for software execution will utilize advanced hardware security coupled with industry standard software interfaces, such as those from the GlobalPlatform industry association. This secure environment will be offered to silicon, software and equipment partners.

"The integration of the hardware, software and services necessary for system-wide security has been slow," said Warren East, CEO of ARM, in a statement. "This will be of significant step in terms of improved consumer trust in secure transactions on connected devices," East added.

In the same statement Olivier Piou, CEO of Gemalto, said: "Our combined efforts will result in the ecosystem as a whole being able to capitalize on the built-in security architectures, especially for transient data such as encryption keys for digital movie rentals, and reduce uncertainties for service providers wanting to launch and manage new services."


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