PONS IP, a leading intellectual property consulting firm, has participated in the final review meeting of the SPIRS project at the CSIC headquarters in Brussels, an event that marked the successful culmination of this ambitious initiative that began three years ago. Leaders of the different work packages participated in the meeting, which ended with excellent feedback from the Project Officer and the experts present. In addition to achieving all the objectives set out in the initial proposal, the project stood out for the way in which it was executed, thanks to the coordination work of the consortium led by the Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla IMSE-CSICthrough Dr Piedad Brox Jiménez.
The Spirs project has also contributed to boosting Europe’s digital sovereignty by ensuring that all the solutions are developed for RISC-V microprocessors, based on a free Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), avoiding licensing costs to external companies by the EU business ecosystem.
For PONS IP, participation in this project through Isabel Marco, Head of Innovation Projects of the Technology Consultancy Department, has been a “very special” experience, as it was the first participation in a European project, on this occasion as a Third Party with Telefónica.
For Isabel Marco, this project is special because “it was the first step on a path that is now consolidated with the current participation of PONS IP in a dozen funded projects. At PONS IP we are grateful for the trust placed in us by our partners. We will continue working for more years of innovation in microelectronics and cybersecurity,” said the head of projects at the consulting firm.
Although a certain sadness was felt at the conclusion of such a significant project, collaboration with many of the partners will continue through the QUBIP project and new proposals recently submitted, which are expected to be funded.
About the SPIRS project
The European Spirs project (Secure Platform For ICT Systems Rooted at the Silicon Manufacturing Process), funded by the European Commission with 5 million Euros, began in October 2021 with the aim of developing affordable hardware-based security solutions. With the participation of 9 partners, including research centres, universities and companies, it has collaborated in the development of a platform on which different security solutions are designed in two application contexts, Industry 4.0 and 5G infrastructures.
Following the principles of open science, SPIRS demonstrators of the platform show how useful it is for companies wishing to incorporate solutions of this type into their products, being able to reuse this material as a basis and adapt it to their specific needs to offer more secure products. In turn, companies that do not have the capacity to make these adaptations will be able to establish collaboration agreements with CSIC researchers, who will provide them with the necessary support.
The most tangible result is a nanometric-sized chip which integrates a set of cryptographic primitives with different functionalities: digital identity generator, random numbers, hash functions, encryption devices and digital signature accelerators. The solution is modular, which means that one or more primitives can be used, providing a higher level of security as more primitives are incorporated. The combination of these primitives is called the Root of Trust (RoT), as the system uses it as the basis for building the entire set of digital security services against cyberattacks.
Among other functionalities, this nanochip can generate a unique digital identity of the device that can be used to generate highly secure ephemeral cryptographic keys, as well as random numbers that meet the quality criteria set by the international standardisation body NIST. In addition, the Spirs platform is able to detect physical changes that could alert to potential threats, such as sudden changes in temperature or power supply voltage, which could indicate tampering and a possible attack.
The Spirs consortium consists of: Instituto de Microelectrónica de Sevilla IMSE-CSIC (Spain), Instituto de Tecnologías Físicas y de la Información ITEFI-CSIC (Spain), Tampere University (Finland); Telefónica (Spain); Politecnico di Torino (Italy); LINKS Foundation (Italy); Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives – CEAA (France); Thales DIS (Germany); NEC (Germany); and Next SRL (Italy).
