How can a European project prepare banks, telecommunication companies, and secure our data in the quantum era? Meet PQ-NEXT
Every time you pay online, log into your bank account, or send a message through a secure app, an invisible piece of mathematics protects you. Cryptography is the lock on almost everything digital. That lock has a well-known weakness, and our project is working to protect it before anyone can exploit it.
The problem
Much of today’s internet security relies on mathematical problems that are extremely hard for classical computers. A classical computer would need an impractically long time to break these codes, so we know we can rely on them.
Quantum computers work differently. In the 1990s, mathematicians showed that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, in principle, break the most widely used public-key encryption systems. Such machines don’t exist at that scale yet, and we do not know exactly when they will. However, the risk is real enough that security agencies and standards bodies worldwide are already acting.
In addition, there is also a new danger, called “harvest now, decrypt later“. An attacker can copy encrypted data today and simply store it, waiting for the day quantum technology can unlock it. Medical records, state secrets and financial contracts that must stay confidential for decades are already exposed to that risk.
And now what?
Researchers have spent years developing post-quantum cryptography (PQC): new encryption methods designed to withstand both classical and quantum attacks. They run on ordinary computers and are based on different mathematical foundations.
The new locks are being designed. The challenge is integrating them into a world that has spent decades building on the old ones. Cryptography is deeply embedded everywhere: in our banking systems, telecom networks, city infrastructure, passports, and industrial machinery. Replacing it is less like changing a light bulb and more like replacing the plumbing in every building in a city while people still live in them without disrupting their everyday lives.
That is the gap PQ-NEXT aims to fill.
What PQ-NEXT is building
The project’s core idea is a migration framework: a way to analyse and model different transition scenarios and produce tailored migration plans for different organisations. Alongside it, the PQ-NEXT team is assembling a catalogue of tools, including:
- PQC and hybrid algorithms. Hybrid schemes combine a classical method with a post-quantum one, so protection holds even if one proves flawed. New cryptographic ideas need time to earn trust, so this is a sensible safety net.
- Maintenance tools. Cryptography needs ongoing care: managing keys, updating algorithms, and keeping long-term data and communications trustworthy. The project’s answer is crypto-agility, the ability to swap algorithms without rebuilding a whole system.
- A quantum programming language. It offers high-performance simulation and hybrid quantum-classical optimisation, giving researchers a way to work with quantum computing directly.
- A quantum cryptanalysis framework. To trust a new lock, you must try to pick it. This part of the project uses quantum computing techniques, focusing on future large-scale, fault-tolerant machines, to test and validate PQC algorithms.
PQ-NEXT into real-life applications
The project solutions will not stay in theory. They will be validated through large-scale, real-life pilots across a wide range of applications, including banking, critical infrastructure, telecommunications, and public services. Four pilots are planned to validate the PQ-NEXT results, namely:
Pilot 1: Secure Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography in Financial Environments
Pilot 2: Quantum-secure orchestration on a Telco Network
Pilot 3: Application of Quantum-Resistant Crypto to Critical Infrastructure deployments
Pilot 4: Quantum-Safe Digital Documents and Identity for Municipality Services of Aigaleo using Quantum-Safe Blockchain and EBSI Integration
We carefully selected these to ensure a smooth transition to the coming quantum era, so we can continue our everyday digital activities without disruption and, most of all, securely.
Explore the PQ-NEXT pilots in detail
Why is PQ-NEXT’s research important?
And you’re probably wondering: how should I prepare, or why should this topic matter to me? The truth is that individually we can’t prevent or undertake any actions. The change will come to our lives, and that is why we are grateful to our researchers. Because you will probably never see PQ-NEXT’s work directly. But if it succeeds, your bank app will continue to operate securely, your digital ID will stay trustworthy, and your phone network will stay unaffected, without you noticing anything changed. Either way, the best security upgrades are invisible…