WISeKey Partners with Cortus to Secure Automated Vehicles Capable of Controlling All Aspects of Driving Without Human Intervention

While automated vehicles become more and more connected, they also become increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks with dramatic consequences on safety. Security specialists, WISeKey and Cortus, join forces to define the future of safety for automated vehicles.

Geneva, Switzerland / Mauguio, France – March 24, 2021: WISeKey International Holding Ltd. (“WISeKey”) (SIX: WIHN, NASDAQ: WKEY), a leading global cybersecurity, AI, and IoT company, and Cortus SAS (“Cortus”), a leader in custom Systems-on-Chip (SoC) design services and IP core provider, today announced they have entered into a strategic partnership to deliver the strongest end-to-end digital security to the automotive industry. This cooperation will shortly expand to other related areas including the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High-Performance Computing (HPC).

The global autonomous vehicle market shipment was estimated at 6.7 thousand units in 2020 and is expected to reach 51.6 thousand units in 2021. The global autonomous vehicle market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 63.1% from 2021 to 2030 to reach 4,223.8 thousand units by 2030.

While global annual sales of passenger car are estimated to remain stable at 70 million units over the next ten years, driver assistance features are expected to dramatically increase from the current ABS, emergency braking, or blind-spot monitoring to autonomous driving. Along with this evolution, vehicles are also increasingly becoming automated and connected, making them easy targets for hackers. The onboard computers must be secured to protect their data and ultimately passengers’ safety. A vehicle that is fully automated and cybersecured will be capable of controlling all aspects of driving without human intervention, regardless of whether its design includes controls for a human driver.

WISeKey and Cortus are combining their expertise to offer car makers and parts manufacturers unmatched security solutions in this area.

For decades, WISeKey has been a recognized provider of first-in-class hardware and software digital security solutions for cybercrime protection, people and object identification and authentication. WISeKey is both a Root of Trust (RoT) and a Certificate Authority (CA), uniquely positioning the Company to offer consistent security architectures from the digital key generation (VaultiTrust ™ and INeS services) to the connected object. WISeKey’s RoT is the only one based in a military bunker in the neutral country of Switzerland. WISeKey’s IoT security solution protects end-to-end data management due to its expertise and capabilities in the design and deployment of large cryptographic systems as well as VaultIC hardware security modules. The recent acquisition of AI specialist arago has expanded WISeKey’s expertise in digital security to Big Data computing.

Since its inception in 2005, Cortus has acquired indisputable world-wide notoriety as a designer of custom SoC, processors and hardware IPs. To date, more than 8 billion devices have been manufactured with Cortus’ IPs inside. The Company is particularly expert wherever low power consumption and high performances are required. As such, Cortus has soundtrack records in complex automotive systems design, transforming ideas to silicon. Cortus is also one of the dozen original platinum founding members of the RISC-V foundation (www.riscv.org) and a specialist in this new open standard processor architecture which is already very popular in the electronic marketplace.

“WISeKey's proven experience within the automotive industry, is demonstrated with the adoption of our ISTANA platform by Daimler AG to validate the authenticity of vehicles’ parts, protect communication between vehicles’ processors and to provide over-the-air software updates,” said Carlos Moreira, Founder and CEO of WISeKey. “We have already developed a state-of-the-art automotive security infrastructure and this new strategic cooperation with Cortus will allow us to bring our security expertise deep into the automated vehicles ecosystem.”

Michael Chapman, Founder and CEO of Cortus, added: “The combination of WISeKey’s software and hardware digital security with our recognized expertise in designing efficient and reliable Systems-on-Chip is a perfect fit to address the new demanding cybersecurity requirements of the automotive industry. This marks a new and exciting era for both companies, both on a technology and on a business ground.”

To learn more about WISeKey’s cybersecurity solutions, visit WISeKey.com.

To learn more about Cortus’s hardware expertise, visit Cortus.com.

About WISeKey

WISeKey (NASDAQ: WKEY; SIX Swiss Exchange: WIHN) is a leading global cybersecurity company currently deploying large scale digital identity ecosystems for people and objects using Blockchain, AI and IoT respecting the Human as the Fulcrum of the Internet. WISeKey microprocessors secure the pervasive computing shaping today’s Internet of Everything. WISeKey IoT has an install base of over 1.5 billion microchips in virtually all IoT sectors (connected cars, smart cities, drones, agricultural sensors, anti-counterfeiting, smart lighting, servers, computers, mobile phones, crypto tokens etc.). WISeKey is uniquely positioned to be at the edge of IoT as our semiconductors produce a huge amount of Big Data that, when analyzed with Artificial Intelligence (AI), can help industrial applications to predict the failure of their equipment before it happens.

Our technology is Trusted by the OISTE/WISeKey’s Swiss based cryptographic Root of Trust (“RoT”) provides secure authentication and identification, in both physical and virtual environments, for the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. The WISeKey RoT serves as a common trust anchor to ensure the integrity of online transactions among objects and between objects and people. For more information, visit www.wisekey.com.

About Cortus

Cortus is a leading semiconductor, embedded systems and IoT solutions company headquartered in Mauguio (near Montpellier, France) with offices in Meyreuil (France) and Moscow (Russia) as well as subsidiaries in Greece, Italy, Brazil and Taiwan.

Cortus provides a full range of IC design services based around their broad IP portfolio which includes processors, digital, analog, mixed-signal and RF IP; prototyping and verification solutions in many areas such as automotive, image processing, industrial controllers, satellites, M2M controllers, secure microcontrollers, smart metering, wireless communication, touch screen controllers, IoT devices, SIM cards, bank cards, e-passports, etc.

Cortus is a core contributing member and board member of the DASH7 Alliance.

Cortus is one of the dozen platinum founding members of the RISC-V Foundation and a strategic member of RISC-V International. For more information, visit www.cortus.com.