Notes for compliance, procurement, and brand teams thinking carefully about authentication architecture. Audit-defensible. Governance-grade. No marketing dressing.
Cryptography tells you a code was signed by an authorised issuer. It does not tell you whether the product carrying the code is genuine. The four failure modes cryptography alone cannot prevent — screenshot replay, printed duplication, inventory leakage, geographic replay — and what lifecycle enforcement adds.
Read the noteTwo words used as if they are interchangeable. They are not. Traceability is a recorded history; chain-of-custody verification is enforceable evidence. The five elements that separate them, and where the distinction bites in DSCSA, FMD, and CDSCO review.
Read the noteEvidence reconstructed after the fact is rarely defensible. Why audit posture must be designed in at the point of event — and what that looks like in code, ledger, and operating model.
Three jurisdictions, one direction of travel: unit-level identity, sequenced events, and structured evidence. A comparative reading of the three frameworks for compliance teams.
Architecture walkthrough, evidence outputs, and a bounded pilot path.