3M’s Brand Protection and Authentication Product Line Is Bolstered by Leading Secure Serialization and Web Authentication Capability

Brand owners: Do you want to increase visibility into your supply chain and more proactively address a whole range of supply chain issues, including counterfeiting, diversion, return and warranty fraud and more?

Now, a new collaboration gives brand owners the best of both worlds – 3M’s extensive array of materials-based security solutions and Verify Brand’s experience with its unique and patent-pending electronic product authentication solution.

Thanks to a new partnership agreement between the two organizations, 3M's brand protection and authentication product line will offer customers the additional capability to confirm product authenticity, pinpoint location, and track products through secure mass serialization Web technology.

For its part, Verify Brand thinks that the integration of its technology enhances 3M’s proprietary security materials by adding a variety of real-time electronic capabilities, allowing companies to actually see and trace product movement throughout the supply chain.

This integrated and comprehensive solution enables brand owners to:

• Securely serialize their products using any method of carrying a unique code on a product, its label or package. (These codes can be authenticated via the Web using a computer, call center, SMS or text messaging, bar code scanners or RFID tags.)
• Authenticate materials security included on product labels or packaging
• Take advantage of additional benefits such as real-time tracking, alerts, field reporting, management of and response to unauthorized events, as well as ad hoc and scheduled reporting on authentication activity

According to Stéphane Blanchot, 3M marketing manager, 3M follows a step-by-step approach when implementing its brand protection and authentication system on the customer site– starting with an examination of their product, selecting the appropriate anti-counterfeiting solution, and establishing the specifications to adapt it and the authentication platform which includes serial numbers, interface and verification tools. After gathering this information in a customer profile, 3M produces, for each customer, a document with all the specifications for the process definition, the printing, and the reading equipment. And, once the authentication platform is established, it then creates a pilot to check if it complies with the specs, obtains customer approval, adjusts the requirements, and then enters the production phase.

The solutions use security labels combined with a unique code that is authenticated and recorded either on a secure data center at the 3M site in the US or at the customer’s on own data center. “This enables them to have entire control over the security system deployment as well the data storage,” notes Blanchot.

The 3M/Verify Brand solution includes all capabilities necessary for a complete electronic product authentication system using serialization and materials security…provides these capabilities as either a hosted service or products with ongoing software maintenance…and tailors them to protect anything from individual product lines to enterprise-wide product portfolios on a global scale. The solution is compliant with industry standards and regulatory requirements and can be easily integrated with brand owners' current processes and systems.

“Brand owners are looking for a product security solution that is both comprehensive and provides more real-time information with which to address their significant brand protection and supply chain issues,” said Bill Markovitz, marketing development manager, 3M Security Systems Division. “We believe that the combination of 3M’s extensive materials security technology and the innovative, Web-based technology from Verify Brand will provide our customers a market-leading solution.”