News | Telefonica counts on Entrust to Secure Blockchain Platform

• The two companies will jointly explore new
  solutions both to improve the management of cryptographic material and
  identities in blockchain networks and to incorporate this technology into
  the Entrust service portfolio.

Telefónica Tech, Telefónica’s holding
company that comprises the digital businesses of Cloud, Cyber Security, IoT,
Big Data and Blockchain; together with Entrust, a global leader in trusted
identity, payments and data protection; have signed a collaboration agreement
to incorporate Entrust technology into TrustOS, Telefónica Tech’s managed
blockchain platform.

Telefónica Tech’s TrustOS platform is a private ecosystem of trust that
enables companies to connect their business processes with the Blockchain
network. In order to operate in this network, users must be properly
authenticated by means of a certificate issued and signed by a centralised
entity in the network, called Certification Authority (CA). In this way, as it
is a public key infrastructure (PKI), good security practices recommend that
the private keys issued are suitably protected so that they cannot be
compromised and prevent identity theft with valid credentials by having their
certificate signed by a stolen but legitimate key.

Thanks to the incorporation of Entrust nShield hardware security modules
(HSMs) into the TrustOS ecosystem, the management of users’ cryptographic keys
is achieved by protecting them in a secure, hardened, tamper-resistant
environment. The solution protects the private keys associated with network identity
certificates so that they cannot be used outside the HSM for unauthorised
manipulation or actions that have not been previously determined.

This type of solution also provides an answer to one of the biggest
challenges of managed blockchain networks, which is the secure custody by the
operator of the cryptographic material that allows users’ identities to be
unlocked when using the network. In this way, the TrustOS Platform takes a
significant step towards providing sovereign identity services in the cloud, a
field with one of the greatest growth potential in the blockchain sub-industry,
which has not yet solved the usability problems related precisely to the
management of its keys by the user.

In 2020, Telefónica Tech already launched the TrustID project within the
framework of Hyperledger Labs, the largest open-source community for blockchain
business, which enabled the use of externally issued identities in a blockchain
network. With this collaboration, any user with a digital certificate issued by
a PKI will be able to operate in ecosystems managed with TrustID, the TrustOS
identity module.

José Luis Núñez, Head of Blockchain at Telefónica Tech, assures that
“the collaboration with Entrust allows us not only to solve a common
concern of our most expert clients related to the management of cryptographic
material in the Platform, but also to approach the digital identity and
cryptography market with a leading partner in such innovative concepts as the
tokenisation of digital certificates used for signing documents or identifying
ourselves before the administration or the intersection between blockchain,
cryptography and quantum technologies, where we have already executed a proof
of concept in 2020”.                    

Javier Sánchez, Territory Sales Manager for Data Protection Solutions at
Entrust, comments that “applications and services deployed on the blockchain do
not exclude security policies, especially when security around encryption is as
strong as the strategy of protecting private keys. In this sense, we are
delighted to be part of this business initiative with Telefónica Tech by
providing the key protection component with our nShield HSMs”.

Rocío Martínez, Head of Entrust Digital Identity for Spain, says: “We highly
value the collaboration with Telefónica Tech around its TrustOS platform and we
hope to open new lines of collaboration, particularly in the field of digital
identity protection through PKI technology, in which Entrust has been a global
leader for more than 25 years. Implementing this type of solution also in
distributed systems such as blockchain will allow us to apply strict security
procedures while exploring bold initiatives such as identity tokenisation”.

Source: Telefónica media announcement