SSH's quantum-safe NQX encryptor 3.0 is more powerful, scalable, and secure than before

SSH Communications Security (SSH) announces the release of version 3.0 of its quantum-safe NQX communications solution. The new version is more powerful, supports the latest quantum-safe encryption algorithms, and enables customers to manage large numbers of connections between networks, data centers, and factories. 

The NQX software meets the needs of national security agencies and other organizations as they move vast amounts of data between data centers, industrial environments, branch offices and networks in a quantum-secure fashion. Unlike many competing products, NQX transmits data at high rates even when super secure quantum-safe connections are turned on.

"Data protected by classical encryption methods is constantly being captured, so that it can be decrypted later when a capable quantum computer becomes a reality," says Rami Raulas, interim CEO at SSH. "With the NQX solution, even unencrypted data can be protected by a quantum-safe tunnel, keeping data safe from current and future hacking attempts. The solution allows data to be transferred at deeper layers of the network topology, such as the data link layer (Layer 2) and the network layer (Layer 3). In this way, the data travels securely over the open internet, leaving no trace on public servers or nodes. Also, the encryption keys are in the organization's own hands," adds Raulas. 

Suvi Lampila, SSH Fellow and a member of the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Building Block Consortium, explains further: "NQX implements hybrid key exchange so that customers can easily configure their quantum-safe connections to satisfy their requirements. The FrodoKEM key encapsulation mechanism is a more conservative choice preferred by many European countries for the PQC key agreement algorithm, whereas Kyber is a faster key agreement algorithm, and it has been chosen to be standardized as ML-KEM by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US."

The main features of NQX 3.0 are: 

• Quantum-safe key exchange with support for the latest post-quantum cryptography (PQC) key agreement algorithms FrodoKEM and Kyber. 

• Crypto agile design ensures that the latest PQC algorithms can be easily taken into use as they evolve. 

• The solution uses the hybrid approach where classical and quantum-safe algorithms work both in parallel and together. 

• Ethernet support up to 100Gbps for data links between data centers 

• Modernized management system for more efficient operations of even the most complex network topologies 

You can find more information about NQX here.