SToP is a focused and comprehensive initiative with the aim of developing ambient intelligence-based and network-oriented systems for the secure and efficient authentication of products at any stage of their lifecycle, thus empowering legitimate vendors, distributors, governments and consumers to distinguish between genuine and tampered products. In order to successfully achieve this goal, SToP will develop advanced solutions that address unsolved issues of current state-of-the-art anti-counterfeiting technologies and products.

These include inability of current systems to provide 100% authentication of products, inadequate security features, prohibitive costs, lack of solutions able to be covertly integrated in enterprise processes, and inability to overcome technical obstacles. SToP will investigate structure and mechanisms of illicit and grey markets including an in-depth analysis of the supply- and demand-side drivers of trade with counterfeits. Allied to this, SToP will establish a clear business case framework and understanding, especially as it relates to small and medium sized organizations in the evaluation of the financial impact of illicit trade on brand name and revenue, and the steps that are required to prevent it. SToP will develop core technology, techniques and solutions beyond current state-of-the-art that will build the foundation for a distributed and networked product verification infrastructure.

This includes the development and extension of smart tagging technologies as well as the design of suitable and scalable software components. The resulting solution will be customisable to different use cases and industries prone to illicit trade, providing secure management of both "data-on-network" and "data-on-tag" that together will be used to implement secure product verification processes.