Quantum encryption specialist Arqit Quantum and UK-based IoT specialist Blue Mesh have demonstrated a Quantum Secure MQ Telemetry Transport service for Industrial IoT.

The project was funded by the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) 5G Trials and Testbeds programme.

The advent of quantum computing threatens to obsolesce most conventional encryption technologies. In the place of conventional encryption, new approaches are being developed such as lattice-based encryption and learning with errors that are resistant to quantum decryption approaches.

According to cloud security company Zscaler, the limited computing resources typically used in IoT sensors and the proliferation in the number of endpoints, leads to encryption often being overlooked in IoT-based environments, with 83% of all online IoT transactions being in plain text.

Arqit and Blue Mesh collaborated to integrate Arqit’s QuantumCloud to secure sensor network equipment through a security enhancement to an internationally standardised protocol known as MQTT which is a ubiquitous method used for sending data from Industrial IoT devices to cloud servers for data manipulation and analysis.

Adding a security layer to the existing MQTT standard increases the protection of IoT systems used in strategic assets such as ports, petro-chemical industries and rail networks.

Arqit Founder, Chairman and CEO David Williams, said: “We are delighted to have delivered this capability to enhance the security of Industrial IoT. Our core product QuantumCloud delivers stronger, simpler key agreement technology to counter the threats that we read about every day, and it has built in protection against the future threats from quantum attack. We believe that QuantumCloud delivers a significant advantage to many potential customers in strategic IoT networks by solving the encryption problems of MQQT and guaranteeing privacy.”

Managing Director for Blue Mesh Solutions, Richard Brooks said: “Having the opportunity to work with Arqit’s QuantumCloud to build the world’s most secure over-the-air IoT Sensor Data Solution is hugely important for the future of IoT, artificial intelligence, condition monitoring, autonomous transport and any number of digital systems that require the highest level of asset and data security. By increasing IoT data security to a quantum secure level, we can help to protect all power, chemical, transport and energy assets that need the highest level of operational data security.”