16 August 2022

QNu Labs to deliver quantum communication systems to Indian Army

by Oishee Majumdar

The Indian Army has signed a deal to procure QNu Labs' Armos QKD system. The system includes a pair of ‘Armos boxes' (pictured above), placed at each end of the network, Gupta told Janes . (QNu Labs)

The Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has decided to procure quantum key distribution (QKD) systems from Bangalore-based QNu Labs to enhance secured communication for the Indian Army.

CEO and co-founder of QNu Labs, Sunil Gupta, confirmed to Janes that the company has secured a contract to provide its ‘Armos' QKD system to the Indian Army.

Armos is an appliance that protects sensitive data by leveraging quantum mechanics to create and transmit secure encryption keys for symmetric cryptography.

The introduction of quantum computers has made it possible to break the mathematical complexity used in traditional encryptions, Gupta told Janes on 16 August. Therefore, the new generation of data security or encryption “is trying to move away from mathematics to physics”, he added.

“We [QNu Labs] use principles of quantum physics to build a security that is unbreakable even by quantum computers,” Gupta said.

Armos generates quantum bits (qubits), which are then encoded and superimposed, Gupta said. The company uses superposition properties of photons to build a stream of qubits that travel over the optical fibre between the two nodes of the quantum channel, he added.

According to the company, any attempt to read the photon information causes disturbance, thereby increasing the error rate in the channel and causing the keys to collapse. This stops the generation of keys and warns the admin of a possible attack on the channel. The key generation is not resumed until the error rate comes down.

Gupta told Janes

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