Quantum cybers land in Vault Cloud thanks to QuintessenceLabs

Three Australian cybersecurity companies have joined forces once again to bring quantum technology and advanced encryption to a secure cloud.

Thanks to funding from the Australian Cyber Security Growth Network (AustCyber), Vault Cloud, QuintessenceLabs (QLabs), and Ziroh Labs have integrated their respective solutions to bring an offering to life later this year.

The result is touted by the companies as an “integration of homomorphic encryption and Australian quantum expertise into a secure hyperscale cloud for Australian government and critical industries”.

“This is an outstanding example of world leading Australian cybersecurity research and development being commercialised to our domestic market and demonstrating its importance to export markets,” AustCyber CEO Michelle Price said.

It follows the companies in August partnering to deliver a secure enterprise file synchronisation and sharing (EFSS) proof of concept aimed at protecting data.

QLabs will bring its Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) technology to the new partnership. The QRNG generates true random numbers using a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling.

Vault Cloud’s hyperscale cloud has also integrated its new Barbican technology — a key and secrets management layer with access auditing — to the partnership.

See also: Encryption laws are creating an exodus of data from Australia: Vault

Meanwhile, Ziroh Labs’ homomorphic encryption technology that allows data to remain encrypted while certain operations are performed on it, has been integrated into the identity, secrets management, and storage systems of Vault Cloud.

Ziroh Lab’s OStor system allows content, metadata, folder structures and content index to be stored in encrypted format while being available for search, viewing, and retrieval without decrypting on the server side, the company explained.

“This integration work takes another large stride towards delivering homomorphic encryption to end users,” Ziroh added.

Vault was one of the first companies to meet the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) requirements for protected-level ASD Certification, alongside fellow Australian cloud provider Sliced Tech.

The honour, since extended to others, allows Vault to store highly classified government information in its cloud.

Meanwhile, QLabs picked up AU$3.26 million in funding from the Australian Department of Defence previously to continue the expansion of its quantum key distribution capabilities and develop an Australia-specific solution. This was followed by an additional AU$528,000 to progress encryption work for the department.

Australian banking heavyweight Westpac has also funded QLabs’ work, boasting a 16% stake in the company as a result.

QLabs was formed in 2008 as a spin-off out of the physics department at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, although QLabs’ product suite was developed independent of ANU.

Meanwhile, Ziroh Labs formed with the core idea of creating privacy-preserving cryptographic systems that can be used en masse.

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