Tern's Device Authority signs five year deal

Internet of Things-focussed investment company Tern announced on Thursday that its investee company, Device Authority, has signed a five year contract for its ‘Automated PKI, Secure Gateway Provisioning & Registration and Credential Management’ product with a “leading” global manufacturer and vendor of machine to machine (M2M) and IoT devices.

The AIM-traded firm said that, for every Gateway device shipped that incorporated the Device Authority technology, Device Authority would receive a payment as well as an annual license fee subscription.

It said the contract, initially worth $0.24m over its lifetime, was for a minimum of 29,000 devices.

Any devices shipped over and above that figure would provide Device Authority with additional revenue.

“I am delighted to announce this contract today,” said Tern CEO Albert Sisto.

“It provides further validation of Device Authority's technology and platform, which solves important security and operational issues for IoT ecosystem.”

In addition, Tern said it anticipated that Device Authority would work with the unnamed partner to build and launch new security services for its Gateway devices, which could deliver additional revenue over time.

Device Authority reportedly complemented the partner's offering with a set of features addressing ‘Device Trust’, ‘Data Trust’ and operational management issues in IoT deployments.

Its ‘KeyScaler’ platform addressed the security concerns that many industry verticals would have, Tern’s board explained, by providing the “most appropriate” identity and access management for IoT devices.

Specifically, it said the services being delivered were “essential” for delivering the ‘Device’ and ‘Data Trust’.

“Through this partnership, Device Authority's KeyScaler will be integrated as part of the partner's own cloud service, initially to deliver credential management based security to their deployed Hardware Gateways,” Tern’s board said in its statement.

At this stage, Tern said it was unable to provide details concerning the identity of the partner.

“As is common in this sector, a customer must give permission for their identity to be released and this may not always be forthcoming due to the sensitivity and confidential nature of the services provided by Device Authority.”