The complicated challenge of bridging software companies into China has certainly not gotten any easier in the past few years.  Official policy both within the PRC and in many western countries have exacerbated distrust and suspicion leaving a narrower range within which successful commercial exchanges are possible.  BYG Advantage is fortunate to be working with Trustonic, a remarkable British company which provide a unique secure operating system solution, that is quickly becoming a default for Mobile OEMs, IoT manufactures and increasingly Tier-1 and Automotive OEMs, across Greater China. 

Headquartered in Cambridge, England, Trustonic was initially a spin-off from both ARM and Gemalto allowing for unique, inimitable solutions for end-point security, which Trustonic brand as ‘Kinibi.’  Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) solutions have long been a critical component for security on mobile devices and increasingly have become imperative for the safe integration of complicated IVI, OTA and other critical, innovative solutions for modern vehicles.  Kinibi has helped to establish a benchmark for international security standards, including becoming the first solution to be recognized as having achieved EAL5 Assurance Level with the international standards body Common Criteria.  

China is well established as the world’s largest automotive market with both foreign players and numerous traditional domestic brands and innovative new entrants. Understandably many of the most successful Chinese companies hope to export their automobiles to new markets globally.  At present there are a number of open-source, low-cost TEE solutions available in the domestic Chinese market. These are solutions which independent testing consistently shows are inferior to Kinibi across multiple criteria.  China automotive Tier-One’s and OEMs had traditionally defaulted to these local variants for security and therefore our collective BYG and Trustonic challenge has been to profile the definitive differentiation of Kinibi and explain the rapid evolution of the security standards globally. 

In the contemporary dynamic, where it is critical for Chinese auto OEM’s to demonstrate unimpeachable security to increasingly skeptical western regulators and consumers, leveraging an internationally recognized TEE, anchored in standards, and broadly deployed by western auto OEM competitors, has proven a compelling value proposition for the China automotive industry.   BYG Advantage is has helped to Trustonic to cover enormous ground, rapidly establishing Kinibi as a benchmark for China automotive OEMs, demanding international recognition and legitimacy as well as the highest standards for domestic security, as well.  Kinibi has helped to level the playing field for emerging Chinese brands seeking to compete effectively in new markets.