WISEKEY MOVES INTO DIGITAL JOB CREATION »»» by Raymond Langley
WISeKey moves into digital job creation – Forging a new path in China
Early in the morning at a café in a conference centre in Dalian, China in September, Carlos Moreira sipped his coffee and reflected on the challenges facing his company and its interdependent, interconnected and deeply recession-battered world.
“WISeKey is becoming a bit like Google … "
The CEO of WISeKey, the Swiss maker of high-versatile digital identity encryption systems, had recently seen his company named a New Champion by the World Economic Forum, a nomination which told the Forum’s audience of established corporate, academic, news media, and political leaders that WISeKey was one of the world’s most innovative and promising new companies.
Security on a more personal level
The World Economic Forum’s faith was grand but well-placed. WISeKey is the hottest Swiss digital technology company in years. Founded in Geneva in 1999, WISeKey’s first major collaboration was with international non-government organizations, the International Organization for Security in Electronic Transactions (OISTE) foundation and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The partnership yielded international standards on cyber security and electronic commerce solutions that were widely embraced by governments and leading corporations around the world.
WISeKey made its PKI, which stands for “Public Root Key”, the heart of digital identity systems, devices and services designed to protect creators and consumers alike from the rogues of the digital age: hackers, spies, counterfeiters, trespassers and thieves. Whereas giant digital security corporations, like Symantec and McAfee, protected your computer mainly from a constant onslaught of faraway viruses, WISeKey’s services operated on a more personal scale.
With WISeKey’s software on your computer, you can secure your log-in info, e-mails and transactions at your convenience. If you’re a producer of high-quality, expensively manufactured goods, WISeKey can provide digitally encrypted badges and biometric readers to modernize your facilities and increase the loyalty of your customers with authentification software.
Carlos Moreira, Chairman WISeKey, Peter Liu, Chairman WI Harper and John Béguin, Chairman Swiss Style Magazine
Lastly, large-scale telecommunications projects – airports, office buildings mobile networks, etc – have become far more efficient, “green” and ready for international business when embedded with WISeKey’s full suite of digital ID programs.
Living up to a straightforward vow WISeKey’s mission statement is a straightforward vow “to facilitate and enable the mass use of secure digital identities in everyday life”. It hasn’t always been easy, but the company lives up to it.
With a corporate culture powered by the Swiss tradition of discretion and neutrality, WISeKey gained the trust of the world’s great corporations early on. It partnered with Microsoft, Rolex, and HP. Those collaborations helped those companies become greener bureaucracies, more secure product developers and better supporters of small businesses’ clients needs for secure and efficient electronic transactions. WISeKey soon moved from being a promoter of digital certifications and secure e-transaction systems to being an implementer and service provider in this fast growing field.
According to market research by Gartner, the security software market increased 19% per year in recent years. WISeKey rode that market to the
“WISeKey is becoming a bit like Google … our digital identity encryption systems are becoming platforms people and organizations customize and use to manage their lives. They often do it in creative ways we hadn’t even imagined. I find that rewarding. It feels good to empower people to shape their own fortunes.”
Governments, both federal and municipal, regularly hired WISeKey to help increase the safety and effectiveness of their internet services. Corporations in industries as varied as retail and high-speed sailboats praised WISeKey’s customized and original digital transaction systems for helping them stay a step ahead of counterfeiters of their products and data thieves.
Furthermore, WISeKey stayed true to its public service spirit and continued to collaborate with a few non-profit organizations. At the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative, Moreira announced plans for WISeKey to create digital identity solutions for mobile phones to help the world’s immigrants, both legal and illegal. Few companies can pull off these projects, for they require that WISeKey be skilled and trusted enough to play the role of honest broker, coordinator and service provider to a country’s often competing key stakeholders: government ministers, business operators, the news media, corruption watchdog groups and, last but far from least, consumers.
“WISeKey is becoming a bit like Google,” Moreira says. “Our digital identity encryption systems are becoming platforms people and organizations customize and use to manage their lives. They often do it in creative ways we hadn’t even imagined. I find that rewarding. It feels good to empower people to shape their own fortunes.”
All in all, WISeKey kept a very busy slate. The small firm was contributing digital identity solutions to the world’s greatest challenges, from sustainable development to security in electronic transactions to immigration. In 2010, WISeKey would consider a public offering of shares in the company, so its management could invest and move quickly into mass market digital identity protection for electronic transactions. It would sell digital ID products directly to consumers.
According to Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, an eBay¬backed company that helps stores like Wal-Mart and J.C. Penney sell online, e-commerce was set to grow to 15% of overall retail in the next decade from around 7%. Since e-security concerns would grow along with e-lifestyles, WISeKey’s business would flourish. Moreira thought he had all the bases covered.
A fateful meeting for a new path
Then Moreira met Peter Liu. A mutual friend introduced them to each other in the conference centre in Dalian. Liu was chairman of the WI Harper Group, one of the world’s most successful venture capital firms. With offices in Beijing, Taipei and San Francisco, and special insights on the Chinese technology markets, WI Harper Group was big time. Founded in 1996, WI Harper’s portfolio included companies like Sirf, a San Jose, California-based provider of GPS chipsets and Shanghai-based Medical System, a clinical information system provider.
Moreira and Liu hit it off. A 15¬minute chat stretched to three hours. Shared passion for international development and smart digital business eventually led the two men to discover a new path for WISeKey’s business: job creation.
It wouldn’t be easy. The job of creating jobs anywhere in the world seemed practically impossible during the recession. This fall, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based think tank that does intense research on the challenges of 30 member countries (which happen to be most of the world’s most-developed countries), reported that unemployment would remain terrible in 2010. It would rise to nearly 10% by the end of 2010, from 5.6% in 2007, and above its previous post-1979 peak of 7.5% in 1993.
“WISeKey is very excited about the prospect of helping China deploy digital ID security technologies and solutions on a large scale”
The OECD report said that government spending programmes on the labour market – retraining programmes, for example – could be better focused. While programmes to put workers on reduced hours have sustained the incomes of many jobless people, coverage of such benefits is weak in some OECD countries.
Peter Liu and Carlos Moreira decided on the spot that investing their considerable resources and talents in a digital identity technology hub in China would be good business and good for a large society with a highly mobile labour force. WISeKey and WI Harper signed a letter of intent to collaborate on developing business opportunities for WISeKey in China.
The agreement is aimed at creating convergence in the electronic identity ecosystem in China by offering WISeKey’s expertise in value-added services and products to the growing user community of digital identification for electronic identity cards, electronic tokens, biometric devices, mobile operators and SIM identification. In short, they will facilitate the growing demand for digital authentication products, and the two companies will open physical centres to employ locals and distribute WISeKey’s entire suite of digital ID encryption services to telecommunications and e-commerce companies and ministries.
Needless to say, both men were excited about their epiphany. “WISeKey is very excited about the prospect of helping China deploy digital ID security technologies and solutions on a large scale,” Moreira said. “We will draw heavily on WISeKey’s experience in working with small and large businesses, consumers and regulators to help make our partnership with WI Harper a great success.”
Peter Liu, chairman of WI Harper, said WISeKey’s leadership role in the growing digital security market, knowledge of all stakeholder concerns and ability to navigate the politics of a strong but still developing economic context were the key attractions. “We are very happy to work with a New Champion of the World Economic Forum in helping their technology to be deployed in China,” Liu said. “We believe WISeKey’s experience in the area of digital security will have a significant impact in China when it is combined with the local manufacturing and electronics industry.”
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