LONDON, UK – 19 February 2014: Trustonic, the leading provider of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) for smart connected devices, has entered an agreement with SK Telecom, Korea’s leading telecommunications service provider, to provide enhanced security services to its mobile customers. Under the agreement, TEE-enabled mobile services will be offered to customers for the first time in Korea through SK Telecom.
The agreement establishes SK Telecom as a Trusted App Manager within the Trustonic ecosystem, enabling the company to deploy new enhanced security apps to its customers that utilise powerful hardware features present in Samsung smartphones and tablets. The company’s software developers will also gain access to the Trustonic developer network to aid the development of new value-added applications.
Trustonic’s <t-base (TEE) technology allows mobile operators to utilise a hardware-isolated environment for secure storage and processing of sensitive information. Also, its trusted user interface functionality protects user input from vulnerabilities such as malware or phishing. These features enhance trust in the device, enabling the use of these conventional mobile phones for higher value transactions. The first SK Telecoms apps to utilise this security will provide One Time Password (OTP) authentication, Secure SMS, and secure storage.
Wi Eui-seok , Executive Vice President and Head of Product Planning Division at SK Telecom, said: “SK Telecom is always striving to improve user experiences and provide our customers with the means to reduce risk of data loss. TEE based services ensure secure storage and processing of sensitive data, allowing customers to access content and use applications such as mobile payments, which require strong authentication. Our partnership with Trustonic opens a number of innovative services which we can share with our customers through our new Trusted App Manager as well as new business opportunities across Asia.”
Ben Cade, CEO of Trustonic, commented: “SK Telecom has taken the initiative to provide their customers with TEE-enabled applications utilising the hardware features available in these Samsung devices. This enables the operator to provide innovative new services from enterprise grade authentication to mobile payments or the delivery of protected content to mobile devices.”
If you’d like to learn more information of this announcement please visit the Trustonic booth 7-G81 at Mobile World Congress.
About SK Telecom
SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM, KSE: 017670), established in 1984, is Korea’s largest telecommunications company with more than 27 million mobile subscribers, accounting for over 50% of the market. The company reached KRW 16.301 trillion in revenue in 2012. As the world’s first company to commercialize CDMA, CDMA 2000 1x, CDMA EV-DO and HSDPA networks, SK Telecom launched the nation’s first LTE service in July 2011. SK Telecom also became the world’s first mobile carrier to launch LTE-Advanced on June 26, 2013 by applying core LTE-Advanced technologies including Carrier Aggregation. Backed by rapid nationwide deployment, a rich device lineup and diverse mobile value added services, the company secured over 13.5 million LTE and LTE-Advanced subscribers as of June 2013. Also, based on its strength in network operations business, SK Telecom is seeking new growth engines by building ICT convergence business models in areas of healthcare, enterprise solutions, media and education. For more information, please visit www.sktelecom.com
