World's first commercial light-based encryption

By Steve Malone

Posted on 4 Nov 2003 at 09:53

MagiQ Technologies says that it can offer an 'unbreakable' encryption system via what it calls 'Quantum key distribution'.

Whilst current encryption technologies rely on encrypting the data into 1024 bit chunks, if you throw enough computing horse power at it for long enough you can decrypt the message. This is not possible with quantum key distribution.

The MagiQ Technologies product, known as the Navajo Secure Gateway, encodes the encryption key photon by photon. With more than one piece of information on each photon. As every schoolchild knows, if you try to determine the properties of a photon, quantum theory says that the mere act of doing so irretrievably changes that photon. In which case a hacker eavesdropper can't copy or read more than one piece of information without destroying the other piece. Therefore, the company claims, transmission of the data is totally secure.

For commercial use Navajo's adds layers of VPN security and standard private and public key technology on top of it's quantum key distribution. At the top layer, DataMinder offers an always-on, industry-standard, IPSEC site-to-site VPN. Below that, the product offers symmetric quantum keys to provide packet-level data encryption.

MagiQ says that the system can operate across distances of up to 120km. With boosters at these distances the network could stretch very much longer. It comes as no surprise that the first customers in the queue are the US government and military and corporations that deal with them.

Find out more at the MagiQTechnologies website