Crypto Quantique‘s $8m round led by ADV (with participation from EF) will bring quantum safe cryptography to a connected world.
Connecting everything to the internet will enable computing to take place at the edge at an unprecedented scale. Last year, Softbank predicted 1 trillion connected devices by 2025. Although we can be sure most forecasts are wrong; its clear that securing an exponentially larger number of connected things is the biggest challenge facing our industry.
To date, we have collectively failed to secure devices when they first connect to the internet and so its time to consider a new approach. We believe: security should begin at the point when a device wakes up for the first time; require no human intervention; and should be quantum safe to future proof.
Assuming Softbank are right, our industry ought to be asking itself: what’s the best way of avoiding a catastrophic security failure once everything is connected to the internet?
So, how do we secure devices at birth rather than treat the symptoms of failing to do so later in life?
Crypto Quantique can secure devices at a level currently impossible in the industry using a combination of cryptography and quantum physics. The technology has the potential to secure every device throughout the entire IoT value chain and the traffic that flows between them.
Until now we’ve had to inject keys into a device, therefore creating a risk of interception. The opportunity here is to enable devices to create their own keys as they wake up or are born. Crypto Quantique has reduced a quantum state reader down to the size of a grain of rice, enabling any electronic device to create private keys for encryption.
Its unique feature is that a single chip can generate multiple, unique, unforge-able cryptographic keys on-demand. These keys are never stored, are resistant to side-channel attacks, and can be used independently by multiple applications, including secure device onboarding.
Why did we back CQ?
Their approach to delivering quantum safe cryptography is likely to lead to value destruction in several decade old multi billion dollar security markets and in so doing create new opportunities and business models for a new generation of quanum safe businesses.
This funding round allows Crypto Quantique to bring its first product to market and make some key hires. Also announced today is Kumi Thiruchelvam joining as co-founder and CCO to lead the company’s commercial leadership and customer engagements.
He joins CEO Dr. Shahram Mossayebi, PhD in post-quantum cryptography and CTO Dr. Patrick Camilleri, PhD in microelectronics engineering and complex systems.
We asked CEO and co-founder, Shahram Mossayebi for his thoughts: “The proliferation of catastrophic end-point derived cyber-attacks is unacceptable, dangerous and threatens to irrevocably undermine trust in our connected world. Silicon, device, software and solution providers must urgently work together so that device security becomes a foundation rather than an add-on, and end-to-end IoT security is the new norm. Crypto Quantique is proud to lead this radical cybersecurity transformation, to enable cloud-like economy; unforgettable device identity that is protected from manufacture to end of life; and the highest levels of foundational security”.
Some features of the technology:
- Quantum driven security foundation offering a complete solution for identifying, securing and managing IoT devices while reducing cost and lowering risk
- Very high entropy multi-use, unforgettable, tamper resistant cryptographic keys generated on-demand direct from silicon using quantum tunnelling
- Quantum safe device identity and private keys can never be compromised as no key injection, no key storage and no True Random Number Generator (TRNG) are required on device. Quantum-safe cryptography refers to efforts to identify algorithms that are resistant to attacks by both classical and quantum computers, to keep information assets secure even after a large-scale quantum computer has been built
- Cloud ready multi-use Key Management System offering frictionless device enrolment and zero-trust, zero-touch provisioning and on-going lifecycle management