IoT Tech Targets Whiskey, Gin Counterfeiters

Tags in the labels allow customers to authenticate the product on their phone.

Counterfeit

HID Global and Old Kempton Distillery recently deployed an Internet of Things platform to combat counterfeiting of the company's whiskeys, gins and other liquor products. The platform enables Old Kempton Distillery to guard against grey market activities and allows customers to authenticate their product at the point of sale. In addition to the anti-counterfeiting benefits, HID’s IoT offering provides the company with a way to stay connected with customers via direct and hyper-personalized communications.

The distillery’s solution incorporates HID Trusted Tag Services into the AusNFC web application that can be accessed by customers’ phones. An HID cryptographically secure Near Field Communication (NFC) tag is embedded into the label of every liquor bottle, which links to HID’s cloud authentication service.

By tapping their iPhone or Android phone to the bottle, the customer activates a secure communications channel that authenticates the provenance of their product - down to the actual bottle number. Each tap generates a unique URL, preventing counterfeiters from copying, spoofing or manipulating the URL for false verification. The advanced cryptographic capabilities of the embedded tags make them virtually impossible to be cloned or copied, and the extended security features in HID’s cloud authentication service provide privacy-preserving brand authentication and consumer engagement.

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