[Cryptech Core] Report from NGI_Trust First Coaching Session

[Joachim Strömbergson]

Aloha!

On Tuesday 2019-12-10 I had a one hour plus coaching session as part of
the NGI_Trust funded CryRev project. The following text is a summary
from the meeting.

The coaching sessions are used by NGI_Trust to provide advisory and
support to the funded projects. The sessions are also used as a way for
NGI_Trust to keep track of the progress of the projects.

The coach assigned to CryRev is [Sebastian
Kurowski](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian-kurowski-229b3859/).
Additionally [Brook Schofield]([TERENA> About> People> Brook Schofield
(Project Development
Officer)](https://www.terena.org/about/people/schofield.html)) was also
in the call. If I understood it correctly, Schofield has previously been
involved as coach for NGI_Trust. Crucially he has also met Phil Roberts
and have an interest in Cryptech (more about this below).

In the call I gave a 30 min introduction to Cryptech, trying to describe
the background and motivation to the project, how we develop our design
as well as the current status. I then presented the goals of the CryRev
project - what things we want to improve and why.

A lot of the questions by Sebastian related to (in his words) customers
of Cryptech. Why would they choose a Cryptech HSM instead of a machine
for traditional, commercial vendors? We discussed openness and trust.
Sebastian seems to be pro openness, but less sure why organisations
would see it as more important than having a vendor to talk to.

Sebastian pointed out that the third phase of the NGI_Trust funding is
related to market activities. Sebastian specifically asked if it would
be possible to talk to organisations that have shown interest in buying
Cryptech machines from DKS. He would like to see two letters from
different potential customers stating at least a general interest in the
outcome of the project and why. I found it difficult to promise such
letters and contacts. But it seems clear that if we would aim for the
third phase, we need to provide something like this

Brook turned out to be a good champion for Cryptech in this regard. He
explained that he and other representatives from federation providers
had met Phil Roberts and a conference in Estonia (if I understood it
correctly). According to Brook there was a good, high interest from
these organisations in the DKS devices. If I understood Brook correctly
his organisation (GÉANT, I think) had at least one machine (or Alpha
board) in their lab. Brook stated that he believed that had DKS sought
VC funding it should have been possible to get funding to keep DKS
going. Brook seemed to think there is a market for Cryptech based HSMs
among the federation providers. (Again, as far as I understood.)

Sebastian will be tracking the progress of CryRev on behalf of
NGI_Trust. We agreed that progress, coaching sessions should be held
about one month after the milestones specified in the CryRev
application. The next session will be sometime the first week of March.
After the session I received an email from Sebastian that besides
suggested dates included the following comment:

> Thank you very much for the introduction. I have the feeling that I
checked your approach with X-Rays and Orange Juice, but I could not find
anything that is not thought of. Therefore I am looking forward to a
nice project with interesting outcomes.

-- 
Med vänlig hälsning, Yours

Joachim Strömbergson
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                               Assured AB
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