are used to accomplish secure authentication: Enrollment – an individual applies to a credential service provider (CSP) to initiate the enrollment process. After successfully proving the applicant's identity, the CSP allows the applicant to become a subscriber. Authentication – After becoming a subscriber, the user receives an authenticator e.g., a token and credentials, such as a user name. He or she is then permitted to perform online transactions within an authenticated session with a relying party, where they must provide proof that he or she possesses one or more authenticators. Life-cycle maintenance – the CSP is charged with the task of maintaining the user's credential over the course of its lifetime, while the subscriber is responsible for maintaining his or her authenticator(s). The authentication of information can pose special problems with electronic communication, such as vulnerability to man-in-the-middle attacks, whereby a third party taps into the communication stream, and poses as each of the two other communicating parties, in order to intercept information from each. Extra identity factors can be required to authenticate each party's identity. Product authentication Counterfeit products are often offered to consumers as being authentic. Counterfeit consumer goods, such as electronics, music, apparel, and counterfeit medications, have been sold as being legitimate. Efforts to control the supply chain and educate consumers help ensure that authentic products are sold and used. Even security printing on packages, labels, and nameplates, however, is subject to counterfeiting. In their anti-counterfeiting technology guide, the EUIPO Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights categorizes the main anti-counterfeiting technologies on the market currently into five main categories: electronic, marking, chemical and physical, mechanical, and technologies for digital media. Products or their packaging can include a variable QR Code. A QR Code alone is easy to verify but offers a weak level of authentication as it offers no protection against counterfeits unless scan data is analyzed at the system level to detect anomalies. To increase the security level, the QR Code can be combined with a digital watermark or copy detection pattern that are robust to copy attempts and can be authenticated with a smartphone. A secure key storage device can be used for authentication in consumer electronics, network authentication, license management, supply chain management, etc. Generally, the device to be authenticated needs some sort of wireless or wired digital connection to either a host system or a network. Nonetheless, the component being authenticated need