This year, Wibu-Systems is celebrating its 30th company anniversary. Congratulations on this! How did it all start and what was the trigger?

Thank you very much for your congratulations. A lot has happened in terms of technology over the last 30 years and the continuous growth has led to Wibu-Systems becoming a globally recognized technology expert with 130 employees at the company headquarters and subsidiaries.

I met Marcellus Buchheit, who studied computer science, while I was studying electrical engineering in Karlsruhe. In 1987, we had the idea of developing a copy protection dongle for PC software, because at that time we didn't think there was any secure, practical protection. During development, we made sure that our dongle consistently used cryptographic procedures and offered a higher level of security than that of our competitors. Our first product, the Wibu-Box for the parallel interface, contained our first chip and was launched on the market in 1989. The following year, we presented our solution for the first time at the CeBIT trade fair. Since then, we have continuously expanded our solutions, developed CodeMeter specifically for industrial requirements and have also been able to grow continuously.

Have licensing technologies and security experienced a boom with the start of Industry 4.0, and was there a comparable development in your sector beforehand?

Digitalization has shown that networking and the use of software in all types of devices is becoming increasingly widespread, regardless of industry. Software protection in the PC sector has evolved from simple copy protection to a licensing instrument for modular software with network licenses, license lending and activation.

Today, we are seeing an increase in applications in embedded systems and devices, control systems through to the cloud, in industrial automation, IIoT and other areas. Manufacturers are focusing on selling their products in line with demand. Through licensing, they can decide which functions of their devices users can use and how they pay for them, i.e. a one-off amount or pay-per-use or a subscription model. This leads to additional business and regular income.

In the anniversary year, your new, larger company building is now also being built. At the same time, you are the initiator of the neighboring "House of IT Security". What form will cooperation between the companies in this environment take in future?

We have just laid the foundation stone and are constructing two buildings with a gross floor area of 8400^m2 each. A huge investment of over € 30 million. We are thus creating the conditions for our further growth and attractive jobs in energy-efficient buildings with state-of-the-art building and security technology.

The second building, the House of IT Security, is intended to promote cooperation between research and industry. Karlsruhe has an exceptional ecosystem with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, KIT, the FZI Research Center for Information Technology, the Fraunhofer companies, the Cyberforum, a committed city and established companies and start-ups. We want to further advance the topic of IT security, bundle expertise and make an intensive contribution ourselves.

How will Wibu-Systems' business develop in the future? Which technologies will gain in importance in the security industry?

Our company slogan is "Perfection in Protection, Licensing and Security". All three areas are growing. By protection, we mean the technical protection of know-how, realized through the clever use of encryption methods to make reverse engineering and the analysis of software extremely difficult. Licensing offers enormous potential in the licensing of software functions. Manufacturers deliver their products with all functions and only activate the purchased functions for customers. We offer the components for integration into the product and business processes, such as SAP or e-commerce integration. By security, we mean protection against manipulation and cyber attacks, realized through digitally signed program code and data. Increasing networking and connection to the Internet make security a must. Every networked device needs a secure identity.

However, Industry 4.0 also means individualized production in small quantities. As a result, more and more sensitive data is entering the production process. The designer and creator of an object that is created using 3D printing wants to protect it from theft and monitor the number of printed parts, regardless of when and where in the world they are printed.

My goal is to triple our turnover by 2025 and take our company to the top of the global market for the protection of digital products with added value for manufacturers, operators and users. After all, software and know-how worth protecting can be found in all applications - for example in industrial automation, CAD/CAM software, automotive and finance, industry, medicine and wherever digitalization is making inroads. With our investments, we are creating an important prerequisite.