Major milestone underscores importance of PKI as a proven foundation for trust, with DigiCert securing consumers, content owners, and TV manufacturers
DigiCert and CI Plus, LLP today announced that DigiCert CI Plus certificates have been issued to more than one billion devices, providing proven PKI-based common trust standards across the diverse television industry ecosystem. The CI Plus (Common Interface Plus, or CI+) technical specification is an extension of the original Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) common standard that provides additional protection for pay-TV content. It gives pay-TV broadcasters in Europe a method to deliver protected services directly to TV sets without the need for an additional set top box.
“Most people would not have predicted how dramatically the TV landscape would evolve when the CI Plus specification was developed in 2008,” said Richard Hall, Vice President of Customer Success at DigiCert. “Over time, the specification has proven itself as one of the original models for common trust standards across a diverse industry ecosystem. DigiCert CI Plus certificates have now secured more than a billion devices. And with the DigiCert PKI Platform for CI Plus, manufacturers can take advantage of the easiest, most secure, cost-effective way to implement CI Plus standards at scale.”
Armando Dacal, Group Vice President APJ at DigiCert, said: “The achievement of issuing more than one billion DigiCert CI Plus certificates underscores the global impact of PKI-based common trust standards. As we continue our commitment to securing devices and fostering cross-industry collaboration, we see great potential in replicating this success in other regions, such as Asia Pacific, where opportunities for common trust standards are rapidly evolving.”
“CI Plus was founded at a time when TVs required an additional set top box to access pay TV services, and the market support over the years has greatly exceeded our expectations,” said Vlaho Kostov, Chairman of CI Plus LLP. “Due to the wide backing of the CE industry and pay-TV operators, the cross-industry collaboration we have established has been hugely beneficial to everyone, especially consumers. We look forward to continuing this momentum with the goal of hitting the next milestone of 2 billion.”
CI Plus LLP is a partnership of TV manufacturers and Common Interface module manufacturers established to enable the delivery of encrypted broadcast television services and content in Europe. CI Plus defines a common set of specifications for content decryption that use PKI as the foundation. The LLP partners define and conduct continuous testing and audits to ensure trust in the more than 620 registered device types—and now one billion plus devices.
DigiCert operates the authoritative root of trust and delivers the provisioned certificates to the 50 licensees of CI Plus, ensuring:
Device identity and certification
Content delivery and protection
Revocation of compromised hosts as needed
The CI Plus specification was developed by consumer electronic firms Panasonic, Philips (now TP Vision), Samsung and Sony, as well as pay-TV technology company SmarDTV, Neotion and SMiT in partnership with the TC TrustCenter, whose assets related to CI Plus are now owned and operated by DigiCert. The specification represents one of the earliest examples of industry collaboration among device manufacturers and the authoring of PKI-based standards to ensure a trusted foundation for the future.
