Telefonica develops new quantum security proof of concept

The initiative aims to protect data and systems against sophisticated cyber attacks that exploit quantum computing in the future, and the tool the gang of firms have come up can be deployed on-prem or in cloud environments.

The solution, which doesn’t appear to have a name yet, is ‘ready to be tested in a production environment by organizations anywhere in the world,’ we’re told.

Around 20 cybersecurity bods from the four firms have been beavering away over the last six months to develop the proof of concept, and the architecture has undergone a ‘rigorous battery of tests’.

This unnamed quantum security solution has the ability to be updated over time, as you’d expect with any security tool, and is designed to be used in any type of network infrastructure, including SD-WAN, fibre or 5G, says the release.

Telefonica claims the project is a ‘significant milestone in the evolution of cybersecurity, offering robust and advanced protection against current and emerging threats.’

"Quantum security is an increasingly important issue, as quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize many sectors, such as health, finance, and national security,” said Patricia Díez Muñoz, Global Security Director for Networks and Systems at Telefónica.

“That's why Telefónica wanted to be ahead of the curve and come up with an answer that would allow organizations to prepare for quantum-safe communications today. We know that, in the near future, companies that don't protect themselves could be at risk of cyber-attacks that could compromise their data and systems. The solution adopts standards from ETSI and can be integrated in our networks and services."

Carl Windsor, CISO at Fortinet, added: "Fortinet is committed to protecting its customers from current and future threats. This initiative shows how the existential threat to current cryptographic systems can be mitigated, allowing customers to be safe in the knowledge that their data is protected from ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ attacks.”

In terms of nascent tech sub-sectors pitched as being on the verge of transforming everything, quantum computing doesn’t surf the same tidal wave of hype that AI does – but there are plenty of trials and deals going on in the area within the telco world and beyond.

While there are many touted potential benefits like being able to better map genomes and cure diseases, the cryptography question is significant for networks everywhere – the idea being that a hack with the weight of quantum computing behind it crunching the numbers could simply roll over current security measures (more of which you can read about here), and that harvested data pools could be collected now and broken into later with more powerful hacking tools. So the earlier companies get some solid next generation quantum security tools on the market the better.