Introducing Trustonic’s new multi-TEE app protection
Trustonic was originally formed by a coalition of mobile security leaders to answer an acute market need for stronger app security on smart devices. The exponential growth in digitization and mobilization since our formation has meant that embedded security innovation is at the heart of our DNA.
Trustonic created the world’s first open Trusted Execution Environment, or TEE. This hardware-isolated, heavily protected execution environment, complete with a fully functional operating system, has been deployed in over 100 device manufacturing facilities around the world. At the beginning, we served mostly large smartphone manufacturers, OEMs who wanted the highest possible security for their own critical apps, code and data.
Our product was a huge success and the TEE quickly became the industry standard for strong device and app security in smartphones, with some manufacturers following suit and developing their own interpretations of the hardware-isolated platform we first pioneered.
Two years ago, Trustonic surprised the market by launching Trustonic Application Protection, or TAP, the very first app security development platform to give app developers access to the most secure capabilities available in smartphones: the ability to develop apps to run on the TEE. Previously available only to device OEMs, Trustonic democratized the TEE by opening its capabilities up to the regular app developer. Today, we can proudly say more than 2 billion devices are TEE-accessible for any developer.
Shortly after that, we made our first big expansion. To enable the strongest security for apps running on devices without an accessible hardware TEE, we created what we today call a software TEE: a combination of the best available application shielding and protection technologies that together create the safest possible software-protected environment. This move extended strong app protection to all Android and iOS smartphones. Not only could developers build once and run the same code in the hardware and software trusted environments, but they could do so safe in the knowledge that their app would enjoy the best security available on any device; automatically upgrading to benefit from the latest industry-standard capabilities throughout the lifecycle of the app.
Now, in another industry first, Trustonic is introducing a further expansion of the TAP platform. We are proud to announce that we will enable app developers to access other TEEs from major smartphone brands that do not use Trustonic’s own TEE. Our first expansion is to support the TEE and devices of our partner Huawei, now the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. Supporting Huawei’s TEE means TAP now covers the 10 largest Android manufacturers with hardware protection. This is the result of a great amount of work we’ve put into the TAP platform, into industry standards and into our open partnership approach. It doesn’t stop there: we already have more hardware protection expansion plans on the roadmap, with the sole aim of bringing the best protection available to all app developers and all end users, on all devices.
We are incredibly excited about this development and we are getting the best prize we could ask for: the success of our customers in protecting their apps and providing more services with the best UX for users. The TAP platform is experiencing rapid growth in adoption with banking payments, FinTech, crypto, blockchain, authentication, automotive, government and enterprise customer. We are looking forward to developers in even more sectors embracing the ethos of strong app protection.
Read about our announcement with Huawei here.
