BSA |The Software Alliance) released its 2019 Policy Agenda in early February to facilitate discussion and debate around what they believe to be some of the most pressing issues impacting the global economy. As a leading advocate for the global software industry, BSA points out that the software industry supports 10.5 million jobs and adds over $1 trillion to the U.S. economy alone, and because of its significant impact, it is critical to modernize outdated laws and create new policies that generate economic opportunity.

In their Policy Agenda, BSA emphasized 7 core policy areas where their organization was ready to collaborate with the U.S. Congress and Administration:

• Consumer Data Privacy
• Smart and Strong Cybersecurity
• International Data Agreements and Digital Trade
• Law Enforcement Access to Data
• Realizing the Potential of Artificial Intelligence
• Modern Workforce for the Digital Economy
• Intellectual Property Protection

While we support all of these important policy areas, Wibu-Systems is, of course, particularly interested in intellectual property protection where we have focused our technology efforts for 30 years, and more recently, on industrial cybersecurity in the connected environment of the IoT and Industry 4.0. 

IP protections enable the research and development that drives innovation. As noted by BSA, software accounts for nearly 20% of all business. R&D and strict policies geared to protecting IP are critical to maintaining this investment. However, BSA’s 2018 Global Software Survey study found that the use of unlicensed software is still widespread, estimating that 37% of software installed on personal computers worldwide is unlicensed. Furthermore, use of unlicensed software greatly increases the opportunities for malware infections, making the cost impact of unlicensed software even greater. Thus, a global awareness and effort to address the issue continues to be of the utmost importance.

The evolution of connected IoT devices is creating a world of smart homes, smart factories, and smart cities. While this connectivity is serving to fuel our economy and improve our quality of life, it has broadened the attack surface for cybersecurity threats to our connected industries, workplaces, and homes. BSA’s cybersecurity recommendations to protect against these threats include:

• Establishing risk-based standards for the IoT
• Ensuring effective and secure supply chain management
• Strengthening smart cities cybersecurity

For our part, we are actively working with organizations like the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC)to make our security technologies and expertise available for the greater good. We have played an active role in creating the IIC’s Industrial Internet Security Framework and contributed to the fundamental tenets of Trustworthiness in Industrial System Design. 

We are also involved with industry collaborations with companies like Wind River, Infineon, and the Trusted Computing Group to integrate our security technologies into their industry wide solutions. We demonstrated several of these cooperative efforts and use cases at the recent Embedded World and Hannover Messe trade shows in Germany, and will do so again at the upcoming Embedded Technologies Expo & Conference in the USA in June.