Israel has formed a new industry-academic consortium to develop communications technologies designed to protect networks against future attacks by quantum computers.
The Post-Quantum Communications Consortium, supported by the Israel Innovation Authority’s Technological Infrastructure Division, brings together nine technology companies and six academic institutions. Its work will focus on developing and evaluating post-quantum cryptography, quantum key distribution and systems that combine the two approaches.
The effort reflects growing concern that sufficiently powerful quantum computers could eventually undermine widely used public-key encryption methods that protect internet traffic, financial transactions and other sensitive data. Such machines do not yet exist, but governments and companies are beginning to migrate toward cryptographic systems designed to withstand quantum attacks.
The consortium includes Allot, Ceragon, Classiq, Gilat Satellite Networks, Heqa, Elta, NVIDIA, RAD and Ribbon. Academic participants are Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Open University of Israel, the Technion and the University of Haifa.
Allot, a network security and intelligence company, is a founding member of the consortium and will serve as its chair, according to a company news release.
Israel Testing Different Approaches
The consortium plans to investigate several approaches to quantum-safe communications.
Post-quantum cryptography, or PQC, uses mathematical algorithms designed to run on conventional computers while resisting attacks from both classical and quantum machines. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has already standardized several PQC algorithms, and governments and technology companies have begun incorporating them into security products and networks.
Quantum key distribution, or QKD, takes a different approach. It uses properties of quantum physics to establish and exchange encryption keys. QKD generally requires specialized hardware and communications infrastructure, making its deployment requirements different from software-based PQC.
The Israeli consortium will also examine hybrid systems that combine PQC and QKD rather than relying exclusively on either technology.
Research will span several parts of communications infrastructure, including optical and Ethernet networks, internet protocol communications, mobile networks, satellite links, data centers and internet-based systems.
That broad scope could allow researchers to examine how quantum-safe technologies perform across networks with substantially different requirements for speed, distance, hardware and security.
Preparing Networks Before Quantum Computers Arrive
The immediate cybersecurity concern is not that quantum computers can currently break widely deployed encryption. Instead, security agencies have warned about the long migration period required to replace cryptography embedded across communications systems and about so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, in which adversaries collect encrypted information today in hopes of decrypting it when more capable quantum computers become available.
The consortium is intended to help move quantum-safe communications technologies from research toward systems that can be evaluated in practical network environments.
Israel has a substantial telecommunications, cybersecurity and quantum research sector, and the mix of companies participating in the project reflects the range of infrastructure involved. Members include companies working in areas such as satellite communications, network equipment, cybersecurity and quantum software, alongside universities conducting quantum and communications research.
The Israel Innovation Authority is supporting the initiative through its Technological Infrastructure Division, which backs collaborative research intended to develop technologies that can eventually be used by Israeli industry.
The consortium announcement did not specify its budget, development timeline or when technologies resulting from the program could be deployed commercially.
