The QKD-KMS by AIT took part in the “mini EuroQCI” tech demo on 3 days during the ECOC exhibition organized by the PETRUS project. The QKD-KMS by AIT was responsible to implement the KMS layer of the “Austrian” QKD Domain.
The showcase consisted of 3 national domains, and modeled a small EuroQCI. The novelty was showing the different domains connected together. To further mimic the EuroQCI the three domains were assigned to the country that implements the KMS layer, therefore a Spanish domain, a German Domain and an Austrian Domain were showcased.
The QKD layer of the Austrian domain consisted of two QKD links by two different vendors – KEEQuant and Quantum Optics Jena – which were both connected to the KMS by AIT. For this demo the domains were connected through an additional layer. An encryption device then requested the keys from the Spanish and Austrian Domain and enabled a QKD secured Video call and a Lottery application from Spain to Austria through the German domain.
The QKD-KMS by AIT performed very well during the three days and, received, synchronized, forwarded and delivered QKD keys. The main interfaces used was ETSI GS QKD 014 towards the QKD devices and to the upper layer. The key forwarding with ITS encryption and authentication proved performant and reliable.
The synchronization mechanism also proved potent and was able to detect external issues during the tests before the demo. This highlights the importance of integrity protection in distributed database systems, which the QKD-KMS at its core is.
Beyond showcasing the QKD-KMS, the AIT team was also heavily involved in the administrative preparation as a member of the PETRUS project. For the technical demo the AIT KMS team contributed with technical expertise on the system design of the multi domain setup as well as technical organization of test runs and setup.
Overall a huge thanks to the coordination of the PETRUS project and the amazing partners we were able to collaborate for this excellent showcase. This proved to be a great demonstration of the vision of EuroQCI and how QKD can improve the cyber security of Europe.
Additional coverage at the PETRUS website.