These news pages are provided by the Product & Image Security Foundation

Product & Image Security Foundation

For full details of news items, articles and features please refer to the current isssue of magazine.

KBA Acquires De La Rue Giori SA

Koenig & Bauer AG (KBA), the global leader in banknote and security presses, announced (May 21st) that it has acquired a 100% interest in Lausanne-based De La Rue Giori SA. following an enormously successful alliance in this market for almost 50 years.

Until now Koenig & Bauer has primarily focused on designing and building printing presses plus diverse security and logistics features, while its Swiss partner concentrated on international sales and the development of counterfeit-proof processes for banknotes. As a result of this close collaboration a high proportion of securities and more than 90 per cent of all banknotes are printed on Koebau-Giori-DeLaRue die-stamping and perfector presses.

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HOLOPAK OVD Security Solutions to be acquired by ITW

Holopak OVD Security Solutions announced in early April that its parent company, Foilmark, Inc. has signed a definitive merger agreement under which ITW will acquire Foilmark and all of its operating companies. Under the Agreement, ITW will acquire Foilmark's stock for $71.2 million (USD) including the assumption of all existing Foilmark debt.

ITW, a member of the Fortune 200, is a multinational manufacturer of highly engineered components and industrial systems. The company now has approximately 600 operations in 43 countries and approximately 55,000 employees. ITW employs a unique approach giving each business unit operating autonomy while building a large portfolio of operating companies with revenues exceeding $10 billion.

Marc Woontner, Vice President of Holopak OVD Security Solutions, comments, "The acquisition of our company will increase our global scale and financial strength considerably. The acquisition is a significant milestone in our company's history."

Woontner continues, "ITW owns a number of companies who are involved in the security industry but not directly involved with optically variable device technology. We have begun talks to see what synergies exist and how we might benefit from sharing research and technologies. I envision several new families of security products resulting from these synergies. It is an exciting time for us."

As reported in the Nov/Dec '00 issue of Product & Image Security magazine, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) is headquartered in Chicago and the group has a turnover of £5.8bn. Amongst the companies they own in the security sector are ITW Fastex a supplier of security seals and Meyercord Revenue a supplier of tax stamps and banderols.

MIKOH ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF LEADING-EDGE ELECTRONIC CHIP FOR SMART&SECURE

Mikoh Corporation are a provider of Asset Integrity Protection technologies for item and supply chain management. They have recently announced the production and successful testing of an electronic chip specifically designed for its proprietary Smart&Secure™ label technology. The first Smart&Secure labels incorporating the new chip are expected to be available during June 2001.

Smart&Secure is a proprietary technology that incorporates Tamper Intelligence™ into smart labels (electronic data storage labels). Smart&Secure ensures that data stored in a label cannot be accessed or modified by anyone not authorised to do so, it determines whether the label is authentic, and it alerts the user if the label has been moved or tampered.

Firm Impressions-Blockfoil builds business and product range

The company has been active in the security market for many years operating through its Security Foiling subsidiary. One of the innovative products released through this specialist outlet was 'Securigrafix' a highly reflective foil product that carried characteristics that are similar to a hologram although the origination process differs considerably.

Now the restructured group are to launch a new process named 'Photografix'. This takes a photographic origination and embeds it in a standard industry foil to create a result that is very difficult to replicate in any manner other than through a confidential process that Blockfoil is in the process of patenting.

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Live wires

The physical and magnetic properties of amorphous glass coated wire has been put to good use recently by Israeli scientists. Based on know how, and experience of talented immigrants, Advanced Coding Systems (ACS) has been able to bring to market the unique characteristics of the micro-wire which allow a magnetic encoded signature to be extracted from the wire by a specially developed reader.

Signatures are so unique that they are almost impossible to replicate and given the high security of the process involved in manufacturing the wire as well as extracting encoded information from the thread then it seems that security is assured.

CATCH A CLASSIC DOUBLE DECKER SAYS ROYAL MAIL

Millions of buses will arrive at post offices around Britain from May 15, but don't panic, it's not a bizarre new transport policy -just Royal Mail's Buses stamps.

"Buses" celebrates classic British double decker buses that spanned the 20th Century, including that icon of London that refuses to die - the Routemaster.

To properly capture this key element of public transport history it was decided to create a se-tenant strip containing 16 vehicles over five 1st Class NVI stamps. But these are no ordinary stamps. Created over 35 painstaking weeks by one of Britain's internationally-renowned artists, Michael English, the Buses project proved to be a genuine labour of love.

LATVIAN FISCAL STAMP TENDER

De La Rue Holographics, a division of De La Rue International, has prided itself on providing the Latvian Ministry of Finance with exceptional customer service in the supply of secure solutions on fiscal stamps, over the past three years. It was therefore a great honour for De La Rue Holographics to win the recent tender for the continued supply of

Fiscal Stamps to Latvia. On awarding the tender, a spokesman for the Latvian Ministry of Finance stated: "We are delighted to continue our co-operation with De La Rue Holographics. Their expertise in identifying secure holographic solutions for our fiscal stamp requirements has maintained tobacco and alcohol excise revenues at optimum levels and helps us in the fight against counterfeiting".

New standards in laser engraving

ORGA claims to have become the first company world-wide to personalise smart cards with a tiny 80-mycrometer laser engraving. This unique enhancement of the HPPS (High Performance Personalisation System) laser system is a major step forward in protection against card forgeries.

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Microsoft Anti-Piracy Solutions for 'Office'

Solutions honour user privacy whilst helping thwart Software Piracy

Microsoft Corp. has announced plans to step up its worldwide anti-piracy efforts through the expansion of existing technological solutions. The company will apply its successful Product Activation anti-piracy technology and edge-to-edge anti-counterfeiting hologram to the next versions of many products in the coming year, including the Microsoft® Office suite of business productivity applications, the Windows(r) operating system and Visio® drawing and diagramming software.

Cambridge Smart Labels Conference

IDTechEx, the organiser of last years hugely successful Smart Labels conference has announced that after consulting their delegates they will again be running the event this year in Cambridge (UK).

Robinson College is the venue and the conference will take place on September 24th and 25th, 2001.

This will allow the organiser to have full run of the facilities outside term time and offer more room to the attendees as well as exhibitors. Last years event was a sell out with far more delegates registering than was anticipated.

YEMEN CHOOSES INNOVATIVE PRINTED CODE FOR NATIONAL ID CARDS

5 million cards to be issued, containing a photo and coded fingerprints - providing secure ID for public and private enterprise

The Republic of Yemen has selected Datastrip's innovative printed barcode as the storage technology for its national ID project. Some five million cards containing encoded fingerprint data will be issued to the population over the next five to eight years, providing a highly secure national ID system to support the efficient delivery of public services, and to foster the development of private enterprise.

Ford Motor Company Drives Away Viruses With McAfee

According to independent research organisation Computer Economics, the total world-wide damage done by computer virus attacks in 1999 was $12.1 billion. Ford Motor Company will protect its IT infrastructure and e-mail communication from the latest Internet viruses by implementing the McAfee GroupShield product. The GroupShield product is a key feature of the McAfee Active Virus Defense suite that protects the groupware environment from viruses and malicious code that might spread through e-mail communication.

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A Gem for Big Blue

Gemplus and IBM Join Forces to Deliver World-wide Smart Card Solutions

Gemplus and IBM announced recently a services and technology agreement to collaborate on providing smart card solutions to customers of both companies worldwide.

As part of the agreement, Gemplus will combine their strength in card personalisation, issuance and logistics, with IBM's systems integration capabilities and Chip Management System solution to offer robust, leading edge, smart card solutions across every industry sector.

Nocopi solutions for Westvaco

LICENSE AGREEMENT WITH NOCOPI TECHNOLOGIES AUGMENTS WESTVACO BRAND SECURITY'S PORTFOLIO OF "BRAND THEFT SOLUTIONS"

Westvaco Brand Security, Inc., has entered into a license agreement that gives the company broad rights to market Nocopi Technologies' patented authentication and anti-counterfeit and anti-diversion processes for primary and secondary packaging and labels, consumer products and documents.

"Nocopi's vast array of current and next-generation technologies are an important addition to our rapidly growing portfolio of Brand Theft SolutionsTM," says Stanley G. Hart, President of Westvaco Brand Security. "They greatly enhance our ability to empower brand owners around the world with customised security solutions throughout their supply chains."

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Thinking inside the box...

David S Smith has announced the launch of its iDent range of product identification and tagging systems. iDent offers solutions to tracking, authenticity, traceability and tamper evidence issues from a range of products that include Radio frequency identification tags down to new ideas for the improvement of standard optical (printed) codes.

At the very core of the iDent family of products is a range of tags that feature Flying Null's, remotely sensed magnetic technology. These iDent tags are small, durable and easily positioned covertly within corrugated packaging. The tags are encrypted and can be read with hand held or fixed scanners.

Don't Bank on it

EURO WARNING FROM BRITTON BANKING & SECURITY

One of Europe's leading security products manufacturer announces stark warning over circulation of billions of Euro notes and coins. In just a few months time, some 9 billion Euro banknotes and 60 billion Euro coins will start to be delivered into banks across the majority of EU countries.

This major move has triggered a stark warning from Britton Banking & Security as it believes many financial organisations are leaving it far too late to obtain their supplies of customised Euro coin bags and bank note wrappers.

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Feature Articles in the current (May/Jun) Issue of Product & Image Security Magazine

INDUSTRY FOCUS - PHARMACEUTICALS

SECURITY IN PHARMACEUTICALS

BY NEIL FARMER. CHAIRMAN NATIONAL COUNCIL U.K. INSTITUTE OF PACKAGING AND GROUP COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR. JARVIS PORTER GROUP PLC

The Pharmaceuticals sector is increasingly becoming a global industry, a truly multi-billion market. Recent estimates of market size are truly awe-inspiring with global pharmaceutical and healthcare products sector worth £220 billion in 2000 and the European market alone valued at £70 billion in the same year. It is also an industry which is constantly facing the challenge of making its products more safe and secure.

Special Report

Brand Protection and Product Piracy: the Global Cost of Counterfeiting and Piracy

While it is tempting to diminish the global impact of counterfeiting in the context of total business revenues and public expenditure, it is argued that there are huge indirect costs that should be taken into account. John Anderson, Executive Secretary of the Anti-Counterfeiting Group and Vice-Chairman of the Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group, examines some of the hidden factors and assesses the full Global Cost of Counterfeiting.

There is a crucial issue facing the corporate security community and the public/private partnerships involved in countering the social and economic impact of organised intellectual property theft. It is the generally held perception that it is either not very serious or that it is some form of 'victimless' crime. There is a widely held view that businesses can afford to pay for the loss of their intellectual property rights and that governments have better things to do than to allocate resources to combating this particular crime.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Group – a trade Association representing some 200 international brand owners and licensed distributors and retailers – has twenty years of experience in challenging this view. There is also a growing recognition from law enforcement authorities that, in tackling counterfeiting and piracy, they are also making inroads into other forms of organised crime.

INDUSTRY REPORT – Foiling

HOW DO THEY DO THAT?
Philip Berrie, of API Security Foils, explores different ways of delivering a hologram or other diffractive effect using hot stamping foil.

This article is all about the medium of hot stamping foil and how it can be used to print mass produced holograms or be used to impart other holographic or diffractive elements to a printed page or piece of packaging.

One-to-one

Awarded top Marks
Jeremy Plimmer talks to John Davies of Biocode

The use of forensic markers as authentication tools is a relatively recent stratagem in the fight against product fraud. There are few global players in this market place but as brands become truly global then providers of brand protection products need to operate on a wider stage in future. They also need to offer more extensive services to their clientele other than a testing technology. Those that succeed in future will provide a total 'hands free' service that leaves the brand owners clear to concentrate on what they do best - exploiting the value of the brand - rather than worrying about product integrity.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Security Holograms: More to them than meets the eye?
by Dr Paul Harris manager of the R&D department and Dr Brian Holmes – Director of Technology - De La Rue Holographics

With the advent of low cost computer scanners and colour copiers, it has become increasingly easy for counterfeiters to copy security devices based on conventional (optically invariable) print technologies. Diffractive optically variable image devices (DOVIDs), of which holograms are a particular class, cannot be copied by such means and are therefore already being used in a wide range of applications.

DOVIDs have, of course, been used for many years for packaging, novelty goods, and brand enhancement as well as for security applications. For the great majority of these applications an attractive strongly iridescent appearance is the only important factor. The specialised world of security applications, however, requires a completely different approach. The key vectors of success in this case are not only an attractive, easily recognisable appearance, but also; is it secure against optical counterfeiting, does it have adequate durability, was it produced in a high security environment and can it be authenticated visually or using a low cost verifier.

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