Public Funding for Kets Quantum Security Ltd

This project delivers a next generation QKD solution designed for telecommunications production environments. This system addresses additional near term market demands not met by current offerings; high levels of security, robustness and networking flexibility - all whilst being delivered at speed and at scale. As deployment of QKD becomes more widespread, transitioning from lab-based verification to national testbeds & commercial trials and services, network and data centre operators are increasingly demanding features in QKD products that are standard in other technologies in their operational stack. The challenge is threefold; firstly, deployment in mission critical data environments demands a level of security currently not widely available in QKD systems. Secondly, deployment in complex networks requires a level of flexibility not easily achieved with point to point QKD products; and thirdly, as the demand for quantum-safe communications grows, the solutions must be extremely reliable and be available at scale. Whilst current QKD systems can offer some of these features, there is not a single product on the market that can meet the full set of requirements. As a result, there is a significant opportunity for an entrant into the market that can provide the scale, security and flexibility that customers are demanding. By delivering a QKD system that meets the key demands from the market of security, reliability and flexibility at scale for the first time, we can ensure that the UK can be at the heart of the global supply chain for commercial quantum-safe communications.

Data centres, and the networks and systems that surround them are the future work horse of digitised economies. The data processing that they provide is a well-known driver for economic growth, providing cutting edge storage and computing systems that increasingly underpin all aspects of business and society. These data centres are huge system of systems, comprising thousands of components coming from a diverse, global supply chain. To account for the ever growing amount and complexity of data that needs to be processed these systems are becoming more complex and have started to incorporate novel chip sets within heterogeneous architectures to provide more efficient training of machine learning problems. Quantum technologies, has long been described as the solution to the world's most challenging data problems. Quantum computing has the ability to significantly enhance our ability to process optimisation, machine learning and sorting problems which are beyond the reach of today's computers, and quantum communications provides the answer to ever-increasing challenges of security. However, to date, very little activity has taken place to understand from a systems perspective how quantum technologies can integrate with existing data centres. Quantum computers and communications systems are often described in isolation, more or less at-odds with the direction of the industry for the last 50 years. This misses the possibility for very significant near term value to be created with quantum/classical hybrid systems. For the first time ever, this project seeks look at quantum technologies through the lens of the existing industry. It brings together experts in classical data centres and networking, quantum computing and quantum communications and will develop a blueprint for a quantum/classical hybrid data centre and a quantum internet.

Integrated quantum photonics offers a scalable platform for many emerging quantum technologies, such as quantum communications and quantum computing. Critical to its success is the development of tools used for the optimisation of fabrication tolerant components which can enhance the control of quantum states on chip and mitigate errors leading to high photon losses. Such tools would be a key enabling feature in the development of photonic quantum logic circuits, offering much greater scalability. The UK has considerable academic expertise in these areas and is well positioned to move forward, however, the complete supply chain to convert research into commercial success is lacking. Our vision for this project brings together a consortium from all areas in the UK supply chain of integrated quantum photonics in order to overcome a key issue and establish the UK as a leader in photonic quantum technologies. Our approach is based on the optimisation of fundamental photonic components, the building blocks of quantum logic circuits and quantum communications transceivers, with a key focus on mitigating fabrication imperfections. Our project plan will develop this capability and demonstrate its potential for the integrated quantum photonics industry in the UK.

Quantum computing has moved from academic labs to commercialization and start-ups are making rapid, demonstrable progress as evidenced by new and emerging product and service offerings. While this is good news for advances in things like quantum chemistry and simulation, it also means that the \`quantum threat' to our current cryptographic methods is getting closer by the day. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) are quantum-safe cyber security tools that are resilient against the computational threats of quantum computing. These tools are typically not used on their own, but instead, are sub-components of larger secure networks and broader cybersecurity product offerings. Building on the already rich heritage of UK and Canadian efforts into quantum communications technologies, our vision in this project is to bring these together to develop and define a QKD network software library and hardware integration standard for all types of physical systems (fibre, free-space, satellite, etc), develop a new integrated QKD-HSM (hardware security module) appliance as a key component of a quantum-safe network fabric, and develop a first proof-of-principle quantum-safe network implementation in order to prepare for Canadian and UK QKD networks to be connected. The end goal of this project is to provide commercial businesses and governments a common quantum-safe network standard and abstraction layer which they can then use to build their required higher level applications on top of, such as websites and e-commerce platforms, while ensuring their security is quantum-safe and the communication is interoperable with other organisations.

Major organisations rely on strong encryption, including the process of encryption key agreement. Future quantum computers have the potential to compromise key agreement schemes based on asymmetric encryption and widely deployed Public Key Infrastructure. Over long distances and without quantum repeaters, Business Continuity (BC) can be maintained if commercially and technically viable Satellite Quantum Key Distribution (SatQKD) becomes available in time. Current free space optical approaches are not considered commercially viable because they can only operate at night time and in clear sky conditions; and by waiting for overhead satellites in Low Earth Orbit. The future BC market, anticipated to be worth billions of pounds, will be addressed by this project through accelerated commercialisation of the SatQKD technologies necessary for operation during daylight hours, cloudy skies and other weather conditions. The project will combine and align technical developments from UK SME's within a system context from Airbus: a major provider of UK-developed secure satellite communication systems. The objective of this project is to prepare new modular flexible system architectures, technology landscape surveys and technology development roadmaps for lower cost, longer range, free space optical quantum communications directed towards institutional and commercial customers. The primary focus of Innovation in this project is to extend the envelope of Satellite-to-Ground QKD operations beyond the current state of the art: to enable daytime operation, cloud tolerance and reach key distribution rates several orders of magnitude faster than existing demonstrators. The project will influence and enhance the coherence of academic research, SME developments, and prime system integration readiness for operational quantum secured communications.

Data is one of the world's most valuable commodities -- affecting every person, every company, every government, everywhere. Most of the world's cybersecurity infrastructure is based on the exchange and use of digital cryptographic keys. Random number generators (RNGs) are essential components of this existing infrastructure, and newer technologies such as quantum key distribution. Quantum random number generators (QRNGs) are devices that utilise the inherent randomness in natural physical processes to create random numbers, assured unique to each device if the process is truly quantum, and are one of the first practical implementations of quantum technologies. A key differentiator of quantum RNGs over other conventional pseudo RNGs, crucial for all security applications, is that identically manufactured and prepared pseudo RNGs are certain to produce the same random sequences, while QRNGs are not. A method for providing authoritative assessment of the unique randomness produced by QRNGs does not currently exist. This project will address that need, thereby overcoming this important technological barrier to their commercial and industrial exploitation, and maximising UK return from quantum technology research in this field. Current tests for random number generators (RNGs), based on numerical analysis of their outputs, give information about the statistical properties of the output randomness but cannot assure that the output is unknown to others. Stronger assessment is possible for QRNGs, since in addition to numerical analysis to assure randomness, the physical process used to create the output can be modelled and physically tested. Assessing the "quantumness" of the process also assesses the privacy of the output. This project will take QRNGs that are either already on the market or near-market prototypes and implement this assessment approach. It will thereby provide the expertise and capability for creating a UK assessment process for QRNGs.

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Much of the cryptography we rely on everyday is based on the difficulty of certain mathematical operations, such as finding the prime factors of a very large integer. However, recent advances in quantum computing means that these difficult math problems might soon be solved efficiently, with a potentially serious impact upon our security and digital economy. This project will develop technologies for "quantum-safe" communications, which are not threatened by a quantum computer. It will combine efficient implementations of new quantum-resistant algorithms and techniques from quantum cryptography, which are immune to all advances in computing, including quantum computing. The project will build prototypes, test their security and demonstrate their benefits to end users.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have seen a huge increase in commercial uptake in recent years, but their applications have been limited, in part by the inability to securely communicate sensitive data back to the ground. Current encryption methods are becoming increasingly insecure due to advances in computing capability. Project Q-DOS light (Quantum key distribution for Drones with Optimal Size weight and power), led by Airbus, will solve this rapidly growing problem by delivering a low-weight, high-speed free-space optical communication system with highly secure quantum encryption and eavesdropping detection. The system will be demonstrated in flight using a small drone (under 7kg) communicating with a ground-station and will therefore have to use novel, integrated, quantum devices in order to meet challenging Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) requirements. Once proven, this technology will become an essential building block of secure communication payloads for future aircraft and spacecraft systems.