Post-quantum Cryptography: 6 French Cyber Players Join Forces to Design the Secure Communication Networks of Tomorrow

The RESQUE consortium brings together six French companies and organisations with complementary roles in the cybersecurity field: technology leader Thales, the consortium’s coordinator; TheGreenBow, an SME dedicated to software development for secure communication systems; CryptoExperts, an SME specialising in cryptography; the start-up CryptoNext Security; the French information system security agency ANSSI; and Inria, the French national research institute for digital science and technology, which also represents six academic institutions, namely the University of Rennes, ENS (École Normale Supérieure) Rennes, the French national scientific research centre (CNRS), ENS Paris-Saclay, Université Paris-Saclay and Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas.

Over the next three years, the RESQUE project (RÉSilience QUantiquE or quantum resilience) will work to develop a post-quantum cryptography solution capable of protecting the communications, infrastructure and networks of businesses and local governments against future attacks carried out using quantum computers. With their vastly increased computing power, quantum processors could break the encryption algorithms that are widely used today, potentially compromising the security of the most sensitive data and representing a threat to national sovereign interests.

The project is funded by the French government as part of the France 2030 investment plan and by the European Union’s Next Generation EU scheme under the France Relance recovery programme, with €6 million of additional financing from Bpifrance. It will focus on two key use cases:

• A hybrid post-quantum virtual private network (VPN) to provide simple, safe and quantum-resistant user access to information systems;
• A high-performance post-quantum hardware security module (HSM) to secure whole systems and for integration with other products.

Within the consortium, TheGreenBow's expertise in VPN and software development will complement the capabilities of CryptoExperts and CryptoNext Security in encryption and both standard and advanced algorithmic cryptography, with Thales providing leadership in algorithm integration and a holistic vision of the applications ecosystem. ANSSI (a non-financed project partner) will provide a research framework and assess the validity criteria for the use cases, and all partners will benefit from Inria’s fundamental research into post-quantum cryptography.