Fortris and IBM collaborate to minimize counterparty risks in digital asset treasury operations with IBM Cloud and its confidential computing technology

Today Fortris and IBM announced that the companies are collaborating to leverage IBM’s industry-leading cloud cryptography and confidential computing capabilities through IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, with the Fortris digital asset treasury operations platform.

This collaboration allows Fortris to provide its corporate users with enhanced tools to securely hold and operate with digital assets such as Bitcoin, minimizing counterparty risks and simplifying complex operations, while remaining in full control over their digital asset keys (known as self-custody).

Fortris CEO, Shane Lourensse, said: “This move will make self-custody easier for institutions and enterprise business. As a trusted provider of security infrastructure, IBM is an industry leader in building innovative confidential computing solutions. We’re proud to be partnering with them to further our mission of supporting widespread corporate adoption of Bitcoin”.

The Fortris platform lets enterprise and institutional clients streamline their digital asset treasury workflows. Fortris will now integrate IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services, which offers the industry's only encryption service based on a hardware security module certified to FIPS-140-2 Level 4.*

This allows Fortris´ clients to operate with 'Keep Your Own Key' (KYOK) capability, retaining sole access and control to their crypto keys. This means, by engineering design, IBM does not have access to clients’ keys even if it is running in the IBM Cloud, so data is protected end-to-end while "in use", "in transit" or "at rest". These enhanced security capabilities help clients mitigate the risk of malicious external or internal actors manipulating workflows, viewing confidential data or getting access to digital assets, and are truly independent of whether they use the infrastructure on-premise, in a hybrid setup or in a multi-cloud environment.

“Everything we do at Fortris is filtered through the lens of the institution,” said Fortris CRO, Noah Herman, “and IBM’s provenance and domain expertise provides the state-of-the-art infrastructure that our institutions demand to maintain complete control and authority over their own assets. Leveraging IBM Cloud and confidential computing capabilities further aligns our digital asset self-custody solution with corporates’ existing enterprise operations and processes”.

Rodrigo Hornos, Principal IBM Cloud Compliance Specialist Manager, said: “IBM Cloud has a long history of working with clients in financial services and other highly regulated industries, especially when it comes to helping them to drive innovation while protecting their sensitive data. We are proud to support Fortris, and their corporate clients, to manage their digital assets securely”.

According to IBM´s annual “Cost of a Data Breach Report”, the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.45 million in 2023 – an all-time high for the report and a 15% increase over the last 3 years. Detection and escalation costs jumped 42% over this same time frame, representing the highest portion of breach costs, and indicating a shift towards more complex breach investigations. 82% of breaches involved data stored in the cloud. Organizations must look for solutions that provide visibility across hybrid environments and protect data as it moves across clouds, databases, apps and services.

About Fortris

Based in Málaga, Fortris is a world leader in digital asset treasury operations for institutions and enterprise business.

Founded in 2017 by a team of payment and security veterans, Fortris gives companies the tools to hold digital assets and use them in business operations such as cross-border payments and payroll.

Fortris is a member of AEFI (the Spanish Association of FinTech and InsurTech). The company has been recognized as one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies in a special report by London's Financial Times and has been repeatedly certified one of Spain's best places to work.

For updates on Fortris’ events and activities, follow Fortris online on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About IBM

To learn more about IBM Cloud, visit: www.ibm.com/cloud/

*Only clients or their trustees control their assets—not EOS Technology Solutions, nor IBM. Clients are issued special IBM smart card HSMs (FIPS 140-2 Level 3) to ensure the root of trust. During a trusted key ceremony, these smart cards collectively generate AES256 bit key parts that are securely transferred to the platform’s HSM and assembled into a master wrapping key inside an isolated HSM (FIPS 140-2 Level 4) domain. Only the client retains control of their master wrapping key. HSM domains are highly isolated and protected by 360-degree envelope tamper detection and response.