Köln, Rotterdam, September 24, 2020. Cologne-based specialist for blockchain-based security technology Ubirch participated at Rotterdam Unlocked 2020 and is this year’s winner in the category ‘Connectivity’. KPN, the largest telecommunica-tions provider in The Netherlands, is looking for innovative, proven, and scalable 5G security solutions in the field of Identity of Things. Ubirch was chosen to have the best solution of all to enhance next generation 5G and digital identification to help create a smart society and future industry together with KPN.

In collaboration with partners like G+D Mobile Security, Ubirch has developed the world's first solution that combines blockchain-on-a-SIM with connectivity services. The service unites the security standards of the SIM card with those of blockchain technology. The solution works like a blockchain that starts at the point of data generation, the IoT sensor. The Ubirch Nano Client on the SIM card signs and chains the fingerprint of the IoT data, creating interlinked micro certificates, representing the data, but not containing it. The Ubirch Trust Service, a highly scalable cloud ser-vice, collects and aggregates those micro certificates and unalterably anchors them into one or several public blockchains. This creates an immutable and non-repudiable log of data for each individual sensor. The benefits for customers are enormous, since IoT data can now be verified regarding its authenticity, integrity, and sequence during each processing operation, by everyone involved, independ-ent of the data transmission channel, beyond any system boundaries. This opens the door to many new data-driven businesses within IoT. 

KPN aims to bring connectivity to the next level by introducing 5G as an enabler for collaborations across different value chains in the digital ecosystem. More and bet-ter connected value chains are the next step towards future cities and societies with a more circular economy. Technologies such as AI, IoT, smart devices, and block-chain are already enabling an improved use of natural resources and a more effi-cient waste management. 

Dominik Lenarczyk, Director Consulting of Ubirch: „Ubirch joined Rotterdam Un-locked to close the trust gap between the physical world and the digital layer in a fully connected world. By using immutable blockchain technology and cryptography we make data verifiable against its source and therefore trustworthy. We need in-novative industry partners and connectivity providers to jointly enable new data driven business models. Signing a pilot contract with KPN makes us very proud and we are very much looking forward working with such a strong partner.”

Unlocked connects startups and scale-ups from all over the world, so they can col-laborate with the local businesses ecosystem to solve circular innovation challeng-es. 

About Ubirch:
Ubirch is the specialist for blockchain-based security technology in the field of IoT with locations in Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Tel Aviv. The team consists of experi-enced specialists in cryptography, blockchain and data-driven business models. Consisting of an extremely lightweight client for sensor firmware and the matching cloud backend, Ubirch's "Blockchain for Things" solution enables military-grade data protection to deliver new business models for IoT. 
The Ubirch solution works similar to sealing a contract at the office of a sworn-in notary. The seal can still be broken and the contract changed but not without leav-ing traces (tamper evidence), and if these traces are detected, the original docu-ment can be retrieved from the notary’s archive for comparison. Innovative cryp-tography and blockchain technologies guarantee the trustworthiness of IoT data. While most other IoT security solutions focus on securing the transmission channel and/or the device, Ubirch focuses on securing the IoT data-packets individually. The advantage and USP of this approach are pervasiveness, warranted authenticity and order of sequence as the security is attached to the data-packets with these inter-linked in a blockchain. They are always secured – even if they have been transmit-ted over non-secure channels. 
Ubirch technology - deployable as software or on SIM-cards - is aimed primarily at customers in the industrial, smart cities, insurance, IoT start-ups, energy supply, homeland security and logistics segments.