Actu
Arqit partners with AUCloud to deploy Australia’s first sovereign quantum encryption service
January 2022 by Marc Jacob
Arqit Quantum Inc welcomes Sovereign Cloud Australia Pty Ltd (“AUCloud”) as the latest local service provider to join the Federated Quantum System for deployment in Australia in partnership with the Australian Government.
AUCloud is a highly respected Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider selling high security sovereign cloud services to the Australian Government, Defence, Intelligence, and Critical National Industry (CNI) communities. NextDC, Australia’s largest data centre operator is a key strategic investor in AUCloud.
Arqit’s Federated Quantum System allows allied governments to have sovereign control of a private instance of Arqit’s technology, interoperable with the system of other participating allies. The main end user is government, but a local service provider is always required and Arqit is delighted that AUCloud will play this role and undertake support for Arqit in Australia.
The emerging nexus around AUKUS – the Australian, UK and US alliance for joint defence investment and innovation – is creating an impetus around cyber security, quantum, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This has catalysed the joint development of an Australia-wide network of Sovereign Quantum Edge Cloud Services.
By addressing urgent threats to existing cybersecurity infrastructure and creating the foundations for critical future capabilities, Arqit’s partnership with AUCloud will deliver an immediate capability to Australian customers in the Defence, Government, Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and Enterprise sectors, including Financial Services.
The relationship will also provide further opportunities for Australian industrial participation in space, cyber and quantum technologies.
This agreement reinforces activities around the UK-Australia Space Bridge agreement (signed between UK and Australia in 2021) where Arqit has been awarded a contract to prepare for Australian participation in Arqit’s Federated Quantum System (FQS) programme alongside UK and Canada. The work includes defining technical contributions to the mission, industrial supply chain and preparation for deployment of Arqit’s QuantumCloud™ technology, which delivers full independence to the customer as well as interoperability with the systems of other allied partners.
Arqit supplies a unique quantum encryption Platform-as-a-Service which makes the communications links of any networked device secure against current and future forms of attack – even from a quantum computer. Arqit’s product, QuantumCloud™, enables any device to download a lightweight software agent, which can create encryption keys in partnership with any other device. The keys are computationally secure, optionally one-time use and zero trust. QuantumCloud™ can create limitless volumes of keys in limitless group sizes and can regulate the secure entrance and exit of a device in a group. The addressable market for QuantumCloud™ is every connected device.
