PQ-NEXT Core: The Pilot Edition – CaixaBank
Discover the PQ-NEXT Pilots
The PQ-NEXT solutions will be validated through large-scale pilots across the finance, critical infrastructure, telecommunications, and digital identity sectors, leveraging selected digital twin use cases. Throughout this blog series, we will take a closer look at each pilot, exploring its objectives, implementation, expected outcomes, and its role in advancing the transition to post-quantum security.
The CaixaBank Pilot
Pilot 1: Secure Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography in Financial Environments
The Pilot
The CaixaBank pilot is the financial-sector pilot within the PQ-NEXT project, with CaixaBank acting as the pilot leader. The pilot brings together CaixaBank, CyberAId, and other PQ-NEXT partners to address one of the key challenges facing the financial industry: preparing for the transition to post-quantum cryptography.
The pilot focuses on gaining visibility into cryptographic assets deployed within a banking environment, assessing potential exposure to quantum-related risks, and evaluating technologies and methodologies that can support future migration to quantum-safe solutions.
As the pilot leader, CaixaBank provides the real-world banking use case, defines operational requirements, coordinates pilot activities, and validates the outcomes from a financial-sector perspective.
The Why
What is the problem the pilot will address, the sector motivation, and the quantum threat rationale?
The financial sector is one of the industries most dependent on cryptography. Banking services rely on cryptographic mechanisms to protect customer information, secure digital identities, authenticate transactions, and safeguard communications across complex technology ecosystems.
The emergence of large-scale quantum computing could eventually compromise some of the public-key cryptographic algorithms currently used throughout the financial industry. Although this threat is not immediate, preparing for it requires significant planning and a long-term strategy.
One of the biggest challenges organisations face today is understanding their existing cryptographic landscape. In large enterprises such as banks, cryptographic assets are often distributed across thousands of applications, systems, devices, certificates, and communication channels.
The pilot addresses this challenge by improving visibility into cryptographic usage and helping establish the foundations required for a future migration toward quantum-safe cryptography. The ultimate goal is to enable informed decision-making and improve the long-term resilience of financial services against emerging quantum threats.
The How
The technical approach, deployment environment, tools, and expected outcomes
The pilot combines CaixaBank’s operational banking environment with CyberAId’s cryptographic discovery and assessment capabilities, along with the expertise provided by the broader PQ-NEXT consortium.
The technical approach focuses on identifying and inventorying cryptographic assets across selected banking environments, including cryptographic algorithms, certificates, protocols, and associated dependencies. This information is analysed to understand potential exposure to quantum-related risks and to identify areas that may require future migration efforts.
CaixaBank evaluates the results from the perspective of a large financial institution, validating both the effectiveness of the discovery process and the usefulness of the generated insights for future planning.
The expected outcomes include increased visibility of cryptographic assets, a better understanding of quantum-related risks, the identification of migration priorities, and the definition of best practices that can support not only CaixaBank’s quantum-readiness strategy but also the broader financial sector’s transition toward quantum-safe security.