The “Q-ARM” EDF project will receive funding by the European Commission!
Zanasi & Partners will be a beneficiary in the recently awarded Q-ARM (Quantum Agile and Resilient Military Communications) proposal, funded under the European Defence Fund (EDF) program.
In 2016, over 3500 scientists and stakeholders signed the Quantum Manifesto, an ambitious initiative to maintain Europe as a global leader in this current quantum technological revolution. Since then, the EDF has put forth numerous calls for quantum technologies, such as the EDF2024 “Non-thematic research actions targeting disruptive technologies for defence” (EDF-2024-LS-RA-DIS-QUANT-STEP), which was a call-to-action requesting “Quantum technologies and/or quantum-resistant cryptography for secure communications”. As a result of this, we proposed the Q-ARM project, which aims to provide crypto-agile, decentralised and quantum secure identity management for defence and critical infrastructure environments.
The Q-ARM project seeks to address the growing need for quantum-secure communication and decentralised identity management in defence. The project will safeguard sensitive data exchanges and identity authentication, and it will achieve these objectives by leveraging the following aspects:
- Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC): A form of encryption designed to be secure even against quantum computers, by utilising new mathematical approaches that even quantum computers struggle with;
- Quantum Key Distribution (QKD): A secure form of sharing encryption keys by using quantum particles like photons, making it virtually impossible for this information to be intercepted without being detected.
By properly applying these methods Q-ARM will provide secure, future-proof protection for both authentication mechanisms and information exchange, primarily for defence and critical infrastructure environments.
Q-ARM is a three-year project with a multinational consortium of 9 partners from 6 different nations, whose roles are as follows:
- ALMAVIVA THE ITALIAN INNOVATION COMPANY SPA [Italy] (Coordinator)
- ZANASI ALESSANDRO SRL-Z&P [Italy]
- AFSEA SEKTSIA SOFIA [Bulgaria]
- Defence Research Institute [France]
- HD-INFO D.O.O. [Croatia]
- TECOMS Srl [Italy]
- N10GLED LDA [Portugal]
- POLITECHNIKA WARSZAWSKA (The Warsaw University of Technology) [Poland]
- WOJSKOWA AKADEMIA TECHNICZNA IM.JAROSLAWA DABROWSKIEGO (The Military University of Technology in Warsaw) [Poland]