Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation and SpeQtral announced that they have reached a definitive agreement to market on and deploy Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) solutions to governments and enterprises.
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In today’s digital economy, data is increasingly being collected, transmitted and processed, inadvertently making cyber-attacks a growing threat.
Interpol’s ASEAN Cyberthreat Assessment 2021 report outlined the exponential increase of cybercrime, inducing organisations to explore more ways to manage sensitive information. Alongside this trend, QKD solutions are gaining market traction in several advanced countries, as the solution applies the laws of physics and quantum mechanics to generate an un-hackable crypto algorithm, securing the transmission and retrieval of data.
The collaboration will help potential users in Southeast Asia understand the need for and consider implementation of QKD solutions to secure their communications, with free knowledge-sharing webinars and workshops as a starting point. As a global hub for financial applications, Singapore in particular serves as a focal point for telecommunications, data centres and cloud connectivity infrastructure. These industries process extremely important and high-value data, and it is crucial to continually review the security of these communications and upgrade current systems to address future threats.
"Southeast Asia is conducive for the adoption of new and leading-edge technologies such as QKD. There is strong emphasis on the cybersecurity of our digital ecosystem and creation of a resilient communications infrastructure," says Chune Yang Lum, CEO of SpeQtral, “We are pleased to collaborate with Toshiba to introduce QKD solutions to the market and play a leading role in enhancing the quantum security of digital communications for governments and enterprises in the region.â€
Additionally, as each organisation has unique data connectivity configuration and security requirements, the SpeQtral-Toshiba collaboration will help provide customised QKD solutions to ensure needs are addressed.
Officially launched in October 2020, Toshiba has developed class-leading QKD platform products that operate over fibre-optic cables based on decades of research and development. These fibre-QKD platform products are able to address quantum-secure communication requirements over hundreds of kilometers in metropolitan areas. To further amplify the reach of these systems, SpeQtral is developing space-based QKD systems using satellites which can cover across continents. Since long-distance quantum-secure network requires both satellite and terrestrial QKD systems, SpeQtral and Toshiba can strongly complement each other through collaboration.
“Toshiba has established industry partnerships in Japan, US and UK on early deployments of quantum secure communications. Together with SpeQtral, we are excited to support businesses in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and can accelerate the global expansion of our QKD business.†remarks Mr. Taro Shimada, President and CEO, Toshiba Digital Solutions Corporation. ■