UBITECH is proud to host the successful kick-off of the SEQURED EDF Research Action, that focuses on “Strengthening Defense Networks for the Quantum Era.” The kick-off meeting takes place in Athens, Greece, on May 19-20, 2025, marking the official start of a project that promises to future-proof military and defense systems and environments. SEQURED, which officially began on May 1st, 2025, is funded by the European Defence Fund (EDF) under Grant Agreement No. 101168112 and will span from May 2025 to April 2028. The project’s primary objective is to fortify and enhance the resilience of defence systems and communication infrastructures against potential threats from quantum computing attacks.
Its main aim is to design a quantum-resistant cryptographic suite for data-sharing, processing, and secure storage. This suite will be resilient to quantum computing advancements and practical for integration into existing defence sector legacy systems. The overarching goal is to establish secure communication channels among diverse entities and services within the broader defence domain, facilitating the transition to the post-quantum era. This will be achieved by developing specifications and implementing prominent quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms and protocols, optimized for the defence sector’s strict timing and security requirements. The project will focus on implementing the four quantum-resistant algorithms selected by NIST: Kyber, Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+. It aims to provide complete specifications for their implementation, balancing sensitive security needs with optimal performance under time and power constraints. The design will also optimize processing power, considering military infrastructure characteristics and known vulnerabilities, particularly physical attacks. This involves developing a novel SW/HW co-design approach, allowing existing defence systems to adopt advanced quantum-resistant algorithms.
In SEQURED, UBITECH drives the overall consortium management, as well as the scientific and technical coordination. From the technical perspective, UBITECH works towards the realization of the Secure Path Establishment, following the “zero-trust” approach, integrating quantum and classical nodes with enhanced post-quantum security. It features a novel attestation scheme for evaluating the trustworthiness and configuration integrity of each node. The attestation evidence enables the trusted path establishment in complex defence systems. Moreover, UBITECH will design and develop the Quantum-resistant Ledger (QR-Ledger), that serves as a trusted intermediary, bolstering auditability and data security. It employs lattice-based ABE and IBE schemes, along with ABAC, to provide precise and granular control over access to data.
On the other hand, QUBITECH drives the implementation of the Crypto-asset inventorying. It is responsible identifying and cataloguing the various types of classical cryptosystems and protocols that are currently in use. Its primary objective is to create an inventory of the existing cryptographic assets, including specific details on running processes, the cryptographic algorithms employed, key sizes, and the total number of key pairs utilized over the system’s lifetime.
Last but not least, UBITECH and QUBITECH will jointly implement the Cryptographic SDK (PQC SDK) – a software development kit that allows integration into any system for secure data processing and cryptographic operations, providing flexibility and ease of integration., as well as the PQC-as-a-Service (PQC-AAS) framework that offers a cloud-based platform for secure data encryption, available to all resource-constrained devices that are not capable for supporting heavy crypto-operations.
