By On January 22, Accenture announced that it has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in QuSecure, a leader in post-quantum cybersecurity. Together, Accenture and QuSecure offer comprehensive post-quantum crypto agility solutions to help government agencies and private sector businesses mitigate emerging quantum risks, according to Accenture.
Headquartered in San Mateo, CA, QuSecure is a privately held company founded in 2019. QuSecure’s QuProtect software offers an end-to-end quantum security-as-a-service architecture that combines zero-trust, next-generation quantum-resilient technology and crypto agility to protect networks, cloud systems, edge devices and satellite communications against today’s cyberattacks and future quantum threats, all with minimal disruption to existing systems.
“Organizations need a reliable, quantum-resilient cybersecurity solution that not only adheres to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) post-quantum encryption standards but that can be easily integrated across all parts of a communications network,” said Tom Patterson, emerging technology security lead at Accenture. “We’re investing in trusted providers like QuSecure to help our clients future-proof their global networks today to protect high-risk data faster.”
Post-quantum encryption standards protect a variety of electronic information, such as private email messages and e-commerce transactions. NIST is advising computer system administrators to start transitioning to NIST’s newly released standards as quickly as possible. According to the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), the shift to crypto agility must start immediately and is a long-term strategy rather than a one-time implementation.
“In a progressively digital world, as AI and quantum threats to encryption evolve at an ever-faster pace, it is critical that we evolve from encryption management that requires several years to upgrade algorithms to orchestrated crypto agility—the ability to push a button and upgrade your entire system at once,” said Rebecca Krauthamer, co-founder and CEO of QuSecure. “The ability to orchestrate cryptography at the enterprise scale—swapping out cryptographic algorithms at any endpoint, anywhere—is critical to a robust cybersecurity strategy. QuSecure and Accenture have a shared vision to provide organizations with a long-term solution to upgrade and manage their encryption standards.”
In 2023, Accenture and QuSecure collaborated to establish the first successful multi-orbit data communications test secured with post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which refers to cryptographic methods that are secure against an attack by a quantum computer. This demonstrates that crypto agility, successfully rotating to a less vulnerable algorithm, is real and possible.
Recently, Banco Sabadell successfully completed a joint project with Accenture and QuSecure to explore the adoption of PQC technologies in the bank’s infrastructure. This project represents a significant step toward strengthening defenses against quantum attacks with Banco Sabadell employing QuSecure’s software for crypto agility to update encryption.
“Crypto agility is critical for the banking industry, allowing for the seamless integration of new cryptographic standards without the need to rebuild entire systems,” said Joan Puig, Group CISO of Banco Sabadell. “Our project, in collaboration with Accenture and QuSecure, enabled us to explore the impact of adopting post-quantum cryptography technologies on the bank’s infrastructure. By embracing crypto agility and testing quantum technologies we’re ensuring our preparedness for the quantum future.”
To help maintain security in a post-quantum world, Accenture developed an eight-step roadmap to help clients secure their data and communications and is collaborating with companies like QuSecure. Working with other industry leaders, Accenture has designed a Quantum Security Maturity Index to give corporate boards and executives a way to measure their quantum security infrastructure against their peers and identify areas for improvement.
QuSecure will also join Accenture Ventures’ Project Spotlight, an engagement and investment program focused on working with companies that create or apply disruptive enterprise technologies. Project Spotlight offers extensive access to Accenture’s domain expertise and its enterprise clients, helping startups harness creativity and deliver on the promise of their technology. Additional cybersecurity, quantum security and space companies that have joined Project Spotlight include Reality Defender, Aliro Quantum and Tenchi Security.
Source: Accenture
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