Building a standardised quantum-safe networking architecture

量子计算已经从学术实验室转向商业化，初创企业正在取得快速、明显的进展，新的和新兴的产品和服务就是明证。虽然这对量子化学和模拟等领域的进步来说是个好消息，但它也意味着对我们目前的加密方法的\‘量子威胁’正变得越来越近。量子密钥分发(QKD)和后量子加密(PQC)是量子安全的网络安全工具，可以抵抗量子计算的计算威胁。这些工具通常不单独使用，而是更大的安全网络和更广泛的网络安全产品产品的子组件。在英国和加拿大致力于量子通信技术的已有丰富遗产的基础上，我们在该项目中的愿景是将这些工具结合在一起，为所有类型的物理系统(光纤、自由空间、卫星等)开发和定义QKD网络软件库和硬件集成标准，开发新的集成QKD-HSM(硬件安全模块)设备，作为量子安全网络结构的关键组件，并开发第一个原则验证量子安全网络实现，为加拿大和英国的QKD网络连接做准备。该项目的最终目标是为商业企业和政府提供一个通用的量子安全网络标准和抽象层，然后他们可以使用这些标准和抽象层在网站和电子商务平台等基础上构建他们所需的更高级别的应用程序，同时确保他们的安全是量子安全的，并且通信可以与其他组织互操作。

Quantum computing has moved from academic labs to commercialization and start-ups are making rapid, demonstrable progress as evidenced by new and emerging product and service offerings. While this is good news for advances in things like quantum chemistry and simulation, it also means that the \`quantum threat' to our current cryptographic methods is getting closer by the day. Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) are quantum-safe cyber security tools that are resilient against the computational threats of quantum computing. These tools are typically not used on their own, but instead, are sub-components of larger secure networks and broader cybersecurity product offerings.Building on the already rich heritage of UK and Canadian efforts into quantum communications technologies, our vision in this project is to bring these together to develop and define a QKD network software library and hardware integration standard for all types of physical systems (fibre, free-space, satellite, etc), develop a new integrated QKD-HSM (hardware security module) appliance as a key component of a quantum-safe network fabric, and develop a first proof-of-principle quantum-safe network implementation in order to prepare for Canadian and UK QKD networks to be connected.The end goal of this project is to provide commercial businesses and governments a common quantum-safe network standard and abstraction layer which they can then use to build their required higher level applications on top of, such as websites and e-commerce platforms, while ensuring their security is quantum-safe and the communication is interoperable with other organisations.