SBIR Phase I: Security Solutions for UHF passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project investigates the feasibility of implementing strong public key cryptography within passive UHF RFID tags for the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical industry incurs over $40B in annual losses due to drug counterfeiting and divergence which directly threatens patient safety. The FDA is urging the industry to adopt RFID technology to mitigate these threats but a large exposure remains if the security of the data on the tag can not be ensured. Today's tags cannot protect the user from unauthorized reading, copying, or tracking due to the lack of onboard security. SecureRF has developed a security protocol which is thousands of times smaller and faster than any other cryptographic function. The anticipated result of Phase 1 is to determine the feasibility of implementing this protocol within passive EPCglobal Gen 2 UHF RFID tags. Pharmaceuticals must be protected from counterfeiting and theft which impacts public safety and drives up consumer drug prices. Without security, the FDA recommended use of RFID tags could introduce new societal threats including patient privacy concerns under HIPAA. Additional commercial value from this project will come from high value asset tracking, contactless payment systems, Defense and Homeland Security including border security, and Near Field Communications. The RFID market is estimated at $1.5-2.0 billion with a projected growth to around $26.9 billion in 2015. If successful, a new low-footprint authentication protocol to address these commercial opportunities will be developed.