On February 23, 2023, the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and consortium partner X-Net Services GmbH, together with the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK), demonstrated the future of highly secure government communication using the world’s most advanced communication and encryption technology. They exchanged messages over a chat app between AIT and BMK, with the data communication encryption being based on quantum-secured cryptography. This technology generates a very large number of highly secure and independent keys, achieving significantly higher security for end-to-end data communication and processing. With the future use of quantum computers, this is an important technology to ensure data sovereignty in Austria and Europe sustainably. This project, “QKD4GOV – Securing Government Data with Quantum-Secure Cryptography,” aims to address the transmission of confidential information between government agencies in various scenarios and is funded by the KIRAS security research program of the BMF.
Press release:
ABOUT QCI-CAT
Building on the long research experience of Austrian institutions in the field of quantum technologies, the project QCI-CAT aims at an adoption of modern encryption technology based on QKD for highly secure communication between public authorities.
QCI-CAT will investigate and verify new security applications for public authorities, such as secret sharing and message authentication.
Additionally, QCI-CAT will also leverage a research testbed for new technological approaches such as the combination of post-quantum encryption with QKD, long-distance QKD with secured trusted nodes and field trials of quantum repeaters.
