Greater than 5% of world trade is in counterfeit goods. Pharmaceutical, printer and cartridge manufacturers, luxury goods, and music industries all face a similar business threat: the manufacturing and sale of counterfeit products into the marketplace. Counterfeiting not only causes loss of revenue, but also potential liability claims and negative impact to their brand. There are also potential risks to the end user as well.

Industry leaders in each market segment in conjunction with some of the largest hardware and software security companies are working together to improve product security to lessen the probability of counterfeit products entering the marketplace. These solutions range from unique product identification to improved tracking of products as they move through the manufacturing and distribution cycle.

RFID technology is emerging as a key technology in these solutions. However, the RFID tag alone is not the solution. Security must be applied to the tag itself to ensure the integrity of the tag and its data. As a result, the industry is exploring the use of cryptographic algorithms on the tags.

There is recognition that security and cryptographic algorithms provide special implementation challenges, especially in constrained systems like RFID tags. There are dual requirements of speed and small size. Many algorithms are computationally expensive but must run at high data rates to ensure the appropriate system response time or throughput. In addition, precise implementation of algorithms and protocols is critical to guaranteeing secure operation and preventing vulnerabilities.

NTRU provides a unique solution to the address the challenges of strong security on the constrained device. Combining the unique performance advantages of the NTRU public key cryptography system (PKCS) and the company's expertise in cryptographic engineering, the NTRU product family enables and delivers strong, high-performance, low-footprint security to constrained environments.