Of all the interesting new tech that seems poised to garner a lot of buzz in 2011, near field communication (NFC), is probably the most exciting. If it takes off, it will transform the ways we communicate, share, and make payments with digital devices. This will likely take years to happen, but the groundwork is being laid right now. And RFinity is one of those companies at the forefront.
While Google and Apple are responsible for generating much of the buzz about NFC at the moment, the technology goes far beyond simply having the right type of chip in your mobile device. For example, how do you handle different types of data transfers being made from one device to another? And how to you ensure that they happen as quickly as possible? And most importantly, how do you ensure that they happen securely? Those are the things that RFinity is thinking about.
The company has just raised $4 million from Horizons Ventures in Hong Kong. And the space has gotten so red hot, in fact, that we hear they’re already out raising another round.
And it’s an easy bet for investors to make not only because of the space, but because of where the project originated: The U.S. Department of Energy. Specifically, RFinity was born when a bunch of infrastructure security experts working for the government were assigned to find all the vulnerabilities in cell phones. Through software they came up with, they were able to quite easily eavesdrop, manipulate SMS messages, and even compromise LAN security. Then they set out to figure out a way to stop people from doing those very things. That work led directly to RFinity.
Work originally began in the person-to-person and person-to-vendor sales space by way of mobile applications that route transactions through RFinity’s own secure servers. But now that NFC appears ready, RFinity is making sure they’re ready for it. The idea is that their technology could cut out the middle man here: themselves.
Obviously, the company isn’t going to share all the details on how they secure NFC transfers. But the basic overview is that they verify an incoming NFC signal and ask for a user’s permission before taking any action. Further, if the action is a transaction, it requires a PIN, just as you might do an ATM withdrawal. That’s all pretty standard. But the key is one-time-use transaction codes that RFinity creates on the fly along with complex cryptographic signatures. These ensure that an transaction is secure since it means that every transaction can only happen once. Even if those numbers were intercepted by a hacker, they would be useless beyond the one-time payment.
And even if your phone is lost or stolen, a thief couldn’t do anything without your PIN. And you can remotely shut down your NFC capabilities via RFinity. It’s enough to make me wish I could throw out all my credit cards right now. “Today’s identification and transaction systems are based on what? A magnetic strip on the back of a card, based on a 1950’s technology that relies on a base station to read the information embedded as a series of simple magnetic markers in plastic tape,” writes Josh Jones-Dilworth, who is working with the company to bring them to market.
Again, NFC as a technology is great and potentially game-changing. But the software is still needed to make it actually work. And some of the big guys began realizing that early on as companies like PayPal, Bank of America, and even Subway have been testing out different things with RFinity for some time. In fact, RFinity has actually been doing field tests of the software end of their technology since 2009 in places like Idaho, well before most people in the U.S. had ever thought about NFC.
But now people are starting to care. And soon, they could be caring a lot more. NFC is already built-in to Google’s new Nexus S device — and the company has put out a call for developers to start using the tech. Rumors have the next iteration of the iPhone gaining the technology as well. In other words, I suspect we may be seeing acquisition rumors starting to fly around RFinity in about six months or so. Provided their technology proves up to the NFC challenge, of course.
Thought the ZH famiglia would enjoy this comment from my old friend Sol Sanders, who has been watching China long enough to actually remember Mao. I read Chinese history as an undergrad and worked as a banker in the semi cap equipment market, which is now dominated by Asian nations. But the export market that China and its neighbors depend upon has never come back. Is China the next Egypt? A version of this column is scheduled for publication in The Washington Times, Monday, Feb. 14, 2011. -- Chris
Follow the Money No. 53: Rolling the dice in China
By Sol Sanders <solsanders@cox.net>
When scientists get further along with epigenetics, they may discover the Chinese have two unique DNA: a gambling gene, and another for hospitality. The first, of course, explains why Macau is odds-on favorite for replacing Vegas as No. 1 world gambling champion. The second suggests why few escape the lure of a Chinese campaign to win visitors’ hearts and minds.
Looking at a new determined shift in Beijing’s economic strategy, one has to chalk it up to that gambling gene. Intoxicated with turning into “the world’s factory”, Beijing plans to sail right past their successful collaborative development with foreign multinationals. Its new strategy literally amends Maximal Leader Deng Hsiao-ping’s dying instructions two decades ago to hide their capacities until they had achieved his four modernizations.
One can only chalk up Western businessmen naiveté to that second suspected Chinese gene, the ability to vamp any visitor. Of course, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx’s more literary companion, explained it all more than a century ago. He foresaw that on the way to the gallows, the capitalists’ greed would drive them to compete with one another to sell the rope to their executioners.
From mid-summer last year Chinese authorities – as a muddled but highly informative U.S. Chamber of Commerce report concludes – shifted from defense to offense. Years of studying their acknowledged total dependence on foreign technology has culminated in proposing 16 new megaprojects. With them they aim:
1] To provide new opportunities for stealing foreign technology. Now, before any technology can be introduced into China, it must be intensely “studied” -- in fact, stolen even before it enters the market. Another is increased allocation of “patents” to Chinese firms with virtually no verification, making it virtually impossible to pursue legal indemnification for losses.
2] To restore the primacy of the SOEs, the state-owned enterprises, those giant behemoths notorious for their inefficiency and corruption but powerful political entities. Massive funds [$25 billion] -- out of the huge 2008 stimulus package, originally aimed at warding off contagion from the world financial crisis – have been allocated to the SOEs to produce “indigenous innovation”
3] To continue to ensnare foreign companies, Beijing will suggest in return for continued tech transfers, they will get a share of the growing Chinese markets. They will also be offered participation in new technologies in China using government funds. But increasingly “import substitution”, that protectionist policy which crippled much of the third world before “globalization” became fashionable, is government policy.
Beijing’s new turn is loaded with risk. The history of Chinese innovation during the current boom is miserable. Eighty percent of China’s major firms do not have R&D at all. One reason may be it has been so easy to rent or steal needed foreign technologies. But there may be even more important – if difficult to evaluate – cultural factors.
Although China was historically leader in basic scientific development, simply said, the Europeans picked up on those breakthroughs to initiate the industrial revolution leaving China behind. Why? The answer to this question is perennial among scholars. One answer lies in China’s intense bureaucratization, in part arising from the need for huge collective enterprises – largely for water control. Another, of course, is Chinese learning has always put the emphasis on rote memorization and an inordinate, even religious, respect and adherence to what has gone before. It may be no accident, as the Communists used to say, now bereft of its Marxist-Leninist-Maoist dogma Beijing is turning back to Confucianism. [A statue of Confucius was recently installed in Tien An Mien square alongside a huge portrait of his greatest adversary, Mao Tse-tung.] With its emphasis on ritual, Confucianism represents the antithesis to the restless European [Greek] mind. An even greater threat to the new effort to produce originality may be the all pervasive corruption permeating Chinese life today which means vast sums promised R&D will go astray.
China is also taking other risks. Despite an intense campaign, Beijing has not been able to lure home more than a few prominent scholars among more than 62,000 Chinese in the U.S., many in technological research. With ties in both cultures, they have been critical to transferring technology. The new Beijing strategy may jeopardize that relationship as American business, reluctantly, and the U.S. government becomes increasingly cautious about China deals.
True, economic development in East Asia was always full of warfare over intellectual property. Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have been major culprits. But the Chinese pour salt in the wound by offering products overseas based on stolen technology. Thus California’s former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking to the Chinese about proposed federally subsidized high-speed rail based on their theft from three foreign companies that had cooperated in creating them in China. At the moment, Washington is grappling with the proposed purchase by Huawei, a Chinese entity with military connections, of an American IT company with the Pentagon as a client.
Beijing’s gamble if successful would insure continued giant leaps forward but like Mao’s infamous economic plays, this one could prove catastrophic.
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