• Quantum tech is being developed for all manner of applications and secure networking opportunities
• Three companies have teamed up to develop quantum-secure satellite communication
• They are aiming to “push the boundaries of secret communication”

World Quantum Day was 14 April but the quantum-related news just keeps flooding in from around the world. One such item is the announcement that three companies – Partisia, Squreroot8 Technologies and NuSpace – have signed an alliance agreement that could lead to quantum-secure satellite communication and “push the boundaries of secret communication”. 

The new programme will see the integration of a quantum random number generator (QRNG), able to generate extremely secure random keys, in an orbiting satellite. This innovation, in combination with advanced cryptography, is expected to deliver a fully quantum-proof solution by satellite to provide encrypted correlated randomness and enable multi-party computation (MPC), a cryptographic method that allows multiple parties jointly to compute a function on their inputs while keeping those inputs secret. It enables collaborative calculations without revealing individual data, ensuring real privacy and accuracy and completely does away with the requirement to have a ‘trusted third party’ to handle particularly sensitive data. 

What’s more, the protocol guarantees that the output is correct, even if some parties are dishonest or deviate from the protocol. MPC has particular immediate relevance in and for secure financial transactions, in ensuring the absolute privacy of shared medical records, in machine learning (where multiple parties can train machine learning models without revealing their individual datasets), in blockchain for secure key management and distributed signatures on blockchains (as well as many other applications, including distributed voting, private bidding and auctions), and fraud detection. 

A satellite equipped with a QRNG generates a random key and securely sends it to two parties, allowing them to communicate privately using post-quantum cryptography. The satellite itself never ‘sees’ that actual data – it just generates random pre-processed values. As the word suggests, pre-processing is the initial stage of data processing, where raw data is prepared for analysis. Pre-processing improves efficiency, accuracy and security in various applications, including cryptography and machine learning. 

However, pre-processing data can be expensive and time-consuming but a secure, quantum-proof machine can generate pre-processed ‘false’ numbers and when the real data needs to be processed, these false numbers can be combined with the real ones for faster calculations, reducing processing time by up to 80%. Preprocessing with QRNG-equipped satellites transforms secure computation by drastically reducing processing time, enhancing efficiency and ensuring quantum-safe security, and makes orbital space the ultimate trusted environment for data privacy and cryptographic advances. 

Partisia, headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark, has been providing commercial MPC solutions since 2008 and is also a pioneer in advanced cryptographic enforced privacy. Squareroot8 Technologies, a quantum photonics company, is headquartered in Singapore and is a spinoff from the island’s National University. It develops devices to enable quantum communication applications. NuSpace, also a Singaporean company, supplies connectivity across the South-east Asia region, enabling large-scale sensor-to-satellite internet of things applications anywhere, anytime. It designs and builds small satellites. 

To keep up to date with the latest quantum-safe networking developments, check out TelecomTV’s dedicated quantum technology page.

– Martyn Warwick, Editor in Chief, TelecomTV