QCI-CAT Stakeholder Event: Three Years of Progress Towards Quantum-Secure Communication
On 26 February 2026, the QCI-CAT consortium welcomed stakeholders from research, industry, public administration and critical infrastructure to Vienna for the project’s final Stakeholder Event. The event marked an important milestone as the first phase of the national EuroQCI initiative approaches its conclusion.
Participants looked back on three years of intensive research and development, presenting the key results achieved within QCI-CAT and discussing the next steps towards implementing quantum-secure communication in Austria and Europe.
The programme included presentations from consortium partners and Austrian stakeholders, highlighting the progress made in building a nationwide demonstration network for quantum-secure communication. Attendees also experienced live demonstrations of several project use cases, including:

• quantum-secure exchange of genomic data
• secret sharing between authorities within a quantum-secure network
• HSM backups using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)
• real-time audio and video communication over quantum-secure channels

A central highlight of the day was the interactive discussion with the audience, where diverse perspectives and insightful questions from stakeholders further emphasized the growing relevance of quantum-secure communication.
The event once again demonstrated how essential open and interdisciplinary exchange between research, industry and public institutions is for advancing the EuroQCI initiative and strengthening Europe’s future cyber security.

Photos: Valerie Maltseva & Katharina Schiffl

The QCI-CAT consortium successfully held its 6th General Assembly, bringing project partners together once again in Vienna—the same place where the project originally kicked off.
Over the course of the meeting, partners reviewed the latest progress across the project and worked intensively on finalizing key results. With the project now entering its final phase, discussions focused on consolidating achievements and ensuring a successful completion of the QCI-CAT activities.
In addition to technical discussions, the consortium also prepared the upcoming final stakeholder event, where the project’s outcomes will be presented to the wider community and relevant stakeholders.
The meeting once again highlighted the strong collaboration within the consortium and the collective commitment to delivering impactful results for quantum-secure communication in Austria and within the broader EuroQCI initiative.

The QCI CAT project proudly announces the QURIOS Quantum Technologies Academy which supports the transition to Quantum Safe Communication by empowering decision makers and enabling the workforce. Check out our courses and workshops on Quantum Key Distribution: www.qurios.academy.

The QCI-CAT project is pleased to reflect on a very successful 5th General Assembly, which took place on September 18th and 19th, 2025. During this meeting, our consortium partners gathered to review the ongoing project progress, discuss critical topics for the upcoming phases, align on next steps to ensure the continued success of QCI-CAT, and to prepare for the next review meeting with experts from the European Commission.

We extend our sincere thanks to our partner University of Innsbruck for hosting of this General Assembly. The well-prepared setting provided an ideal environment for productive discussions, strategic planning, and fostering our strong partnership as we move forward into the next stages of the project.

The QCI-CAT consortium made a trip to the optical ground station (OGS) near Innsbruck during its general assembly meeting. Participants from AIT, SBA, Graz University of Technology and Med Uni Graz took the cable car from Innsbruck to the mount top. At the Hafelekar, located at 2265 m, stands the brand-new OGS of the University of Innsbruck featuring a 1-meter diameter primary mirror.

The ground station is named after Marietta Blau, an Austrian physicist who made groundbreaking discoveries on cosmic rays in the 1930s. The data for her research was actually taken in the very same spot, in the hut just next to the OGS. Today, it is recognized as a “Historic Site” by the European Physical Society.

The station is planned for research activities focusing on quantum communication with and via quantum satellites, quantum sensing in the fields of atmospheric science and astrophysics, and the entanglement of remote quantum memories and quantum processors as a step towards a global quantum internet.

In the EuroQCI context, the Marietta Blau OGS will be one of Austria’s space connections to the Eagle-1 satellite.

More information about the OGS can be found here: https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/groundstation-marietta-blau

The QCI-CAT project is proud to look back on its participation in the IKT-Sicherheitskonferenz 2025 (seminar.bundesheer.at), Austria’s leading event for information and communication technology security. For our project, this was an excellent opportunity to present EuroQCI in a national context and to highlight how our research contributes to strengthening Austria’s cybersecurity landscape, which aligns closely with the conference’s focus on secure digital infrastructures, defence-related IT, and the protection of critical information systems.

A highlight of our participation was the keynote presentation by Sebastian Ramacher (AIT) and Werner Stasser (fragmentiX) titled “And you really want to keep your data private?”. Their talk captured the audience’s attention by demonstrating the pressing need for active cryptographic protection of data in an era of increasing digital threats and the looming challenges posed by quantum computing.

We thank the organizers of the IKT-Sicherheitskonferenz for inviting QCI-CAT to be part of this important platform. The event allowed us to engage with key stakeholders from defence, public administration, industry, and academia, further emphasizing the relevance of our work in both the EuroQCI initiative and Austria’s national security research agenda.

The QCI-CAT Demo Team—comprising X-Net, CANCOM, BMLV, AIT, zynd, and fragmentiX—recently met for a productive review session following the successful implementation of our project’s demonstrations. During this meeting, we analyzed lessons learned, identified opportunities for further improvement, and discussed strengths and weaknesses to ensure that our demos continue to evolve and are even better tailored to the diverse audiences we engage with.

This reflective session provided valuable insights into how we can enhance both the technical execution and the presentation of our demos, ensuring they effectively showcase the potential of quantum-secured communication in various contexts.

A big thank you to all involved for their dedication and the seamless execution of the previous demos—your teamwork and professionalism make these achievements possible and truly enjoyable!

The QCI-CAT project is delighted to look back on an inspiring experience at IDSF 2025 in Vienna. Together with our partners AIT, CANCOM, and X-Net, we showcased our Video Chat and HSM Backup use cases, demonstrating how quantum-secured networking and post-quantum encryption can be integrated into real-world applications.

Our live demonstrations, featuring the WireGuard VPN extension “Arnika” and QKD-enabled HSM backup, attracted strong interest from attendees and highlighted the practical readiness of quantum communication technologies. It was a great opportunity to engage with experts from public authorities, industry, and research, and to discuss the future of secure digital infrastructure in Europe.

We sincerely thank the organizers for inviting us as Austria’s national EuroQCI project to present our work on this prestigious stage. The event was a valuable platform for knowledge exchange and collaboration, and we are proud to have been part of it.

Check out the impressions of IDSF 2025 to relive the highlights of this fantastic event!

Image Credits: Katharina Schiffl / Valerie Maltseva

The QCI Days 2025 in Athens were a tremendous success! Together with our partners HellasQCI and EuroQCI Spain (MAD-QCI), and under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance, we welcomed an exceptional audience to the Eugenides Foundation from 28 to 30 April 2025.

Over three days, participants engaged in a rich programme featuring sessions on securing digital communication, industry panels on large-scale quantum network deployments, insightful use-case presentations, and discussions on standardisation and certification. Highlights included live demonstrations of quantum communication networks by HellasQCI, QCI-CAT, and EuroQCI Spain, interactive end-user discussions, inspiring company pitches, and a PETRUS workshop dedicated to ecosystem development.

We are incredibly grateful to all attendees for their active participation, to our partners for the excellent collaboration, and to all speakers for sharing their expertise and insights. The vibrant exchange of ideas and the strong engagement from policymakers, industry leaders, researchers, and EuroQCI stakeholders made this event an important milestone for advancing Europe’s quantum-secure communication infrastructure.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making QCI Days 2025 such a success—we look forward to building on this momentum and seeing you at future EuroQCI events!

Andreas Neuhold from CANCOM represented the QCI-CAT project at the Grazer Linuxtage 2025 and shared an insightful presentation on a use case developed within our European research project, coordinated by AIT. His talk introduced “Arnika”, a quantum-resistant VPN solution based on WireGuard, developed as an open-source component to fill a critical gap identified during the project.

Arnika is designed to interface with QKD (Quantum Key Distribution) systems via an ETSI014 standard interface, retrieve quantum-generated key material, and inject it as a pre-shared key into WireGuard VPN. In addition, it can integrate keys from post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solutions—such as Rosenpass—and combine QKD and PQC keys through HKDF (HMAC-based Key Derivation Function) before passing them into WireGuard VPN.

As Andreas emphasized, quantum cryptography is becoming increasingly relevant because quantum computers are expected to break current encryption methods within the next decade. While PQC provides a software-based approach to counter this threat, QKD offers a complementary solution by leveraging quantum mechanical effects, such as entangled photons, to securely generate symmetric encryption keys without the need for key exchange.

This presentation was an excellent opportunity to showcase how QCI-CAT is driving forward the integration of QKD and PQC into practical, open-source solutions, making quantum-secure communication a reality for the future.

More information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XO1X27m3T4

https://media.ccc.de/v/glt25-586-quantenkryptographie-auf-open-source-basis