The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded $143,478 to Vienna-based Danube Tech to develop blockchain security solutions.

Silicon Valley Innovation Program

On Sept. 26, the United States DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced in a press release that Danube Tech was awarded a contract to assist the department in its ongoing fight against forgery and the counterfeiting of certificates and licenses.

The news release states that services such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Transportation Security Administration, and Citizenship and Immigration Services can all benefit from blockchain-based security solutions, adding:

“Current issuance processes are often paper-based, do not facilitate data exchange, and use among systems and could be susceptible to loss, destruction, forgery and counterfeiting. S&T is exploring the application of blockchain and DLT to issue credentials digitally to enhance security, ensure interoperability, and prevent forgery and counterfeiting.”

The award is funded through S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) which is a program that funds private sector partners to advance security solutions for DHS. Firms that participate in SVIP can be awarded up to $800,000 to develop and adapt commercial technologies for homeland security use cases.

US Customs and Border Protection trials blockchain

Cointelegraph reported in August that the CBP advisory committee ran tests of its blockchain-based “Intellectual Property Rights Proof of Concept,” which is an attempt to run shipments via blockchain, relying on pre-existing licensor and sublicensee relationships.

The CBP already ran a test for a blockchain-based shipping project in August 2018, which was a combination of CBP’s legacy application and a blockchain-based platform developed by DHS.