SPOQ Project: Ending Plagiarism in Global Supply Chains
The German economy suffers more than 50 billion euros in damage from product and brand piracy each year. The EU market surveillance authorities classified 97 percent of the counterfeits recorded as goods with serious risks. Production and logistics companies are powerless against plagiarism: Globally, there is no cross-industry, cross-border approach to product identity verification
Together with joined forces from industry and science, the Secure Software Systems research group has pitched the SPOQ project (Standardized Secure Product Verification for the Protection of Originality and Quality) to standardize new methods for product identification across supply chains in order to put an end to plagiarism. The pursued standard ensures interoperability between trading partners and bridges the information gap between manufacturers and end consumers. While the latter will be able to verify the identity and history of products, manufacturers will be equipped with a secure and efficient tool to check the originality and quality of product components and raw materials.
The SPOQ project focuses on two major research aspects: The unique product identification utilizing state-of-the-art methods for extraction of optical and electronic product fingerprints, and a blockchain technology as a solid foundation for the supply chain tracing that is resilient against information fabrication attacks. Although blockchains are established as transparent, decentralized databases, the SPOQ project will also satisfy the need of companies for privacy preservation and data sovereignty.
In parallel, the project partners are developing a prototype that is based on suitable technologies for linking physical products with their digital identity and for the secure handling of product and tracking data. Here, the partners rely on hardware that is already in widespread use, such as common smartphones as a platform. For increased security, such platforms can also be equipped with hardware add-ons.
The SPOQ project is funded by the technology support program WIPANO (Knowledge and Technology Transfer through Patents and Standards) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate (BMWi). It is conducted in a consortium with the following partners:
- VDE (Verband der Elektrotechnik Elektronik Informationstechnik e. V.)
- AIM-D e.V. (Industrieverband Automatische Identifikation, Datenerfassung und Mobile Kommunikation e.V.)
- Hochschule Mannheim, Fakultät für Informationstechnik, ESM-Institut
- KOBIL GmbH - Sicherheitstechnologien
- PAV Card GmbH , RFID-Lösungen und IT-Services
You can find more information about this project and publications on this website.
People involved: Prof. A. Dmitrienko, B.Sc. M. Finke.
