A new bridge between Huawei and Trustonic for secure biometric app development

Trustonic Ltd. says its mobile application security development platform now supports Huawei Technologies’ hardware-backed Trusted Execution Environments, where biometrics are processed for device unlocking. It could make Huawei phones more attractive in situations where biometric security is demanded.

The move, a result of a partnership between the two companies formed 16 months ago, is expected to upgrade application security on Huawei phones. The pair also announced support by Huawei’s P40 series telephone for Trustonic’s application protection development platform, or TAP, software development kit.

That support is designed to make it simpler to develop secure apps for Huawei’s flagship P40. This could lure developers whose mobile applications require advanced security. Mobile applications for payments, banking, point of sale and vehicles are examples where biometric systems might be deployed.

In February 2019, Trustonic and Huawei partnered on another development designed to make Huawei phones more secure.

This step involved Trustonic’s trusted execution environment (TEE), an isolated area of the main processor running a second operating system on some phones that is walled off from a device’s operating system by the CPU. Huawei agreed to put Trustonic’s environment on its then-new P40 phones.

The CPU’s hard-wired partition protects apps running on the second OS from vulnerabilities existing on the other side of the wall. TEEs are used in some smartphones for biometric system unlock and disk (so to speak) encryption, says Trustonic.

According to Trustonic, its security products can be found in Volkswagen and Hyundai cars.

Company executives boast that their TAP product is alone in meshing in-app protection that is hardware backed and software based. Huawei will have access to its partner’s Trusted User Interface, which can protect sensitive interactions from main device OSes.

Trustonic’s TAP has been incorporated into a Korean mobile banking app.

Article Topics

biometric application  |  biometrics  |  Huawei  |  SDK  |  smartphones  |  trusted execution environment  |  Trustonic