New And Innovative Supply Chain Threats Emerging
By: Bryon Moyer
But so are better approaches to deal with thorny counterfeiting issues.
“One of the big problems is being able to identify a part, and there have been different tag technologies that have surfaced over the years to address that,” said John Hallman, product manager for trust and security at OneSpin Solutions. “If you go back 10 years ago, there were attempts to attach DNA tags. They’ve made some progress. Now there are all sorts of electronic IDs, where you have an identifier that is random in silicon, and authorization technologies. We’re looking at verification data as a unique identifier, where you take verification data and attach that to the IP using blockchain technology.”
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That’s not necessarily fail-safe, because there are some sophisticated efforts afoot to get counterfeits past incoming quality checks. “There was one case we saw where there was a reel of SMT components, and the first 100 were genuine,” said Ford. “And then every seventh one was a counterfeit. So this has been a reel which has been taken by somebody, all the parts taken off, and then the parts put back on again, specifically designed to defeat any incoming inspection regime. If somebody were to find an unexpectedly high quality problem, it’s so random that they can’t find a path to the responsible party.”
