- Our Luxembourg office is joining forces with POST Luxembourg, HITEC Luxembourg, the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), evolutionQ Inc. and SpeQtral Pte Ltd to execute international next-generation cybersecurity project on End-to-End International Use Cases for Operational QKD Applications and Services (INT-UQKD).
- The 3-year partnership programme, supported by the European Space Agency (ESA), will demonstrate the end-to-end applicability of quantum key distribution (QKD) to secure operational business applications.
- The project’s five pilot use case demonstrations will cover three continents and will make use of hybrid ground-satellite QKD channels.
Starting this month, we are leading a 3-year programme to develop and demonstrate international use cases for quantum key distribution (QKD) in operational IT environments. Supported by ESA, the INT-UQKD programme will use hybrid space and terrestrial fibre networks to field a testbed capability, deploying five pilot use case demonstrations between sites in Luxembourg, Belgium, Singapore, Canada and the UK.
Our Luxembourg team will manage the INT-UQKD project and act as system integrator, working with POST Luxembourg, the University of Luxembourg’s SnT, HITEC Luxembourg, evolutionQ (Canada) and SpeQtral (Singapore). The project is being funded through ESA’s ARTES programme and by Singapore’s Office for Space Technology & Industry.
QKD technology is expected to be the next major step in provision of cyber-secured connectivity and end-to-end applications, with the efficacy of traditional cryptographic techniques being threatened by the emergence of quantum computing. The use of quantum keys makes it possible to verify the integrity of digital communications, but requires specially equipped fibre networks and hybrid satellite-terrestrial networks for long-distance communications. While major investments are being made in Europe in QKD satellite infrastructure, the INT-UQKD project will, through this ESA Partnership Programme, focus on demonstrating the operational applicability of end-to-end QKD systems to secure existing international applications. INT-UQKD will use the SpeQtral-1 satellite, due to be launched in 2024, as an early-available QKD space segment; it will then extend to other satellites for proving broad QKD compatibility.
The overall INT-UQKD project will include the definition, justification and validation of focussed use cases to guide future ESA and European development of QKD solutions, serving European Union (EU) aspirations of digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy. Creating real-life operational demonstrations will help with assessment of technology and security compliance, and with identification of future policy requirements.