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Post-Quantum Crypto Startup PQShield Exits Stealth With £5.5 Million Backing Led by Kindred

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PQShield, the post-quantum cryptography startup, today comes out of stealth to announce a £5.5 Million (about $6.9 million U.S.) seed investment from Kindred Capital, Crane Venture Partners, Oxford Sciences Innovation and angel investors including Andre Crawford-Brunt, Deutsche Bank’s former global head of equities.

“With some of the brightest minds in cryptography, mathematics and engineering, and boasting world-class software and hardware solutions, PQShield is uniquely positioned to lead the charge in protecting businesses from one of the most profound threats to their future,” said Chrysanthos Chrysanthou, partner at Kindred Capital. “We couldn’t be happier to support the team as it works to set a new standard for information security and defuse the risks resulting from the rise of quantum.:

According to the company statement, with tech giants and startups racing to develop full-scale quantum computers, the question is no longer if, but when they will arrive. These super-powerful machines promise an unprecedented problem for security, since they will be able to smash through traditional public-key encryption and threaten the security of all sensitive information, past and present.

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The RSA and Elliptic Curve cryptographic standards of today are very easily breakable by quantum computers, completely undermining the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive information held by businesses, governments and even intelligence agencies. So severe is the problem that the US National Security Agency warned in 2015 it must ‘act now’ to safeguard its systems from the quantum threat, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) initiated a process to define new, quantum-ready cryptographic standards. Unlike older standards, post-quantum cryptography algorithms rely on computational problems that are hard even for quantum computers to solve.

PQShield, which was spun out from the University of Oxford, is helping businesses prepare for this threat. Its team is pioneering the development and commercial roll-out of quantum-secure cryptography – advanced cryptographic solutions for hardware, software and communications that will protect information from the quantum threat, yet can be implemented using today’s technology and are interoperable with companies’ legacy systems.

Dr Ali El Kaafarani, a research fellow at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute and former engineer at Hewlett-Packard Labs, founded PQShield in 2018 after observing the disconnect between the scale of the quantum threat and the level of information security seen at most businesses today.

“Too often, we see a huge gulf between academic theory and commercial reality. Cryptographers know that quantum computers pose a real and devastating threat, yet most businesses fail to recognize the need to protect their information beyond today’s security challenges,” said El Kaafarani. “Whether cars, planes or other connected devices, many of the products designed and sold today are going to be used for decades. Their hardware may be built to last, but right now, their security certainly isn’t. Future-proofing is an imperative, just as it is for the banks and agencies that hold so much of our sensitive data.”

PQShield’s team is made up of researchers with hundreds of publications between them, and has one of the UK’s highest concentrations of cryptography PhDs outside academia and the classified sector. The company is a leading contributor to NIST’s ongoing effort to define future encryption standards.

“At PQShield, our team of researchers and engineers is bringing cutting-edge cryptography solutions out of the research lab and into today’s businesses, so they can confidently face the security threats of today and tomorrow,” he said. “We are delighted to partner with Kindred Capital and our other investors to help realize our vision of a world in which quantum computers pose no threat to information security.”

PQShield is the only cybersecurity company to provide a full suite of quantum-secure solutions for software, hardware, and data in transit. Its System on Chip (SoC) solution, built fully in-house, will be licensed to hardware manufacturers, while the company’s software development kit enables the creation of secure messaging solutions protected by post-quantum algorithms that leverage a provably secure, Signal-derived protocol.

In practice, the company reports that this means that PQShield can secure everything from keyless cars and other connected devices, to data moving to and from cloud servers. As post-quantum cryptography cannot be retrospectively implemented, the need to do so is especially urgent for banks, governments and OEMs, which face a combination of high compliance, long life cycles, and lasting confidentiality and performance requirements. One company already making use of PQShield’s suite of quantum-secure solutions is Bosch, a leading global supplier of technology and services.

Matt Swayne

With a several-decades long background in journalism and communications, Matt Swayne has worked as a science communicator for an R1 university for more than 12 years, specializing in translating high tech and deep tech for the general audience. He has served as a writer, editor and analyst at The Quantum Insider since its inception. In addition to his service as a science communicator, Matt also develops courses to improve the media and communications skills of scientists and has taught courses. [email protected]

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