Government approval sought for quantum encryption

Stephen Withers
Friday, 14 March 2008 07:15

Business IT - Security

The makers of a network security device that uses quantum cryptography have an ingenious plan to gain government approval despite the absence of standards specific to the technology.

Senetas, the Australian developer of the CypherNet Cerberis encryption device, has a partnership with quantum cryptography leader id Quantique. The two companies hope to gain early accreditation for Cerberis from Australia's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD).

Cerberis performs wire-speed layer 2 AES encryption for Gigabit Ethernet, SONET/SDH (up to 10Gbps) and ATM (up to 622Mbps) links, using quantum key distribution.

"It's [quantum cryptography] so new, there are no standards or defined ways of doing the certification," said id Quantique CEO Grégoire Ribordy. The plan is to use a dual-key system combining classical and quantum encryption in such a way that the result can be shown to be "at least as strong as the classical key".

He described this approach as "a fast bypass to accreditation."

Senetas CEO John DuBois said the company's existing products are already certified to FIPS 142-3 and EAL 4+, and only a minor change to Cerberis would be required with this approach. It then "becomes the only quantum encryption device on the planet with government accreditation," he explained.

Several governments recognise each others' security accreditations, opening the door to sales in various countries.

According to Ribordy, formal proofs of quantum cryptography exist, but the problem is showing that a specific implementation matches the theory. There is "a lot of work to do in the next few years" to achieve that, but "people have to trust us at this stage."

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