About our technology
The science behind Symmetrikey and Authentikey.
securing systems in a quantum world
Quantum computers are likely to be with us in a decade or less – and they present major challenges for security professionals.
Verifying human and machine identities
Many of the encryption methods used to secure authentication protocols will be rendered obsolete by quantum computers – while the methods themselves remain vulnerable to social engineering attacks from fraudsters, which are increasing in complexity. This is true of authentication systems that use SMS, WhatsApp, email, and social media. Even biometrics are expected to come under threat from AI-driven scams.
To neutralise these threats, an authentication protocol needs to be protected against quantum attack, to regularly re-authenticate against a fresh root of trust, and provide compromise detection to enable swift identification and remediation of breaches.
Protecting data at rest and in transit
Q-Day makes any data encrypted using traditional asymmetric encryption vulnerable. Even today, criminals are stealing data to be decrypted once quantum computing becomes available, known as Hack Now, Decrypt Later attacks. These threats are forcing governments to set standards and legislate for quantum-safe encryption now.
Existing quantum-safe encryption methods fall into two categories:
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is highly secure, but impractical over long distances or at scale due to its physical nature and cost.
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) offers quantum-safe security that’s more scalable than QKD, but many current implementations suffer from excessive complexity and computational load.
How Cavero Quantum solves the challenge
We have deveoped two technologies that enable organisations to overcome the authentication and encryption challenge; Authentikey and Symmetrikey
Authentikey
Authentikey is the world’s first Continuous Trust Verification Protocol that provides fast and strong mutual endpoint auehtntication, and supports quantum-safe encryption.
Key features
- Supports a classical and quantum-safe keys, supporting crypto-agility and quantum security
- Uses key exchange history to reauthenticate endpoints, protecting against authentication decay
- Enables mutual authentication, building trust between both parties and facilitating passwordless authentication.
Symmetrikey
Symmetrikey is a quantum-safe key exchange protocol that enables the creation of faster PQC solutions that function in constrained environments.
Key features
- Uses Ring Learning With Errors as the basis of security
- Uses correlation filtering inspired by QKD to further improve security
- Lab tests demonstrate Symmetrikey is faster than ML-KEM
- Capable of running in constrained environments
Discover the science behind Cavero Technology
Though based on established principles, Symmetrikey combines those principles in novel ways to produce security. Click below to request our scientific paper explaining the detail of how Symmetrikey works.
How does Authentikey work?
From an initial root of trust which you choose, Authentikey uses key exchange to create a shared ledger of interactions that is used to validate both parties in the authentication.
In subsequent exchanges, the key ledger is used in place of the initial root of trust to authenticate the exchange, and a new key is generated and added to the shared ledger.
Because Authentikey uses the key ledger to reauthenticate instead of the initial root of trust, it protects against Authentication decay – and as long as the keys used are quantum safe keys like Symmetrikey, the authentiation is quantum safe, too.
How does Symmetrikey work?
Symmetrikey uses Ring Learning With Errors (RLWE) as the basis of security. RLWE is similar to the well-known PQC problem, Learning with Errors (LWE), done over a polynomial ring.
A variant of LWE is also used by the NIST-approved ML-KEM and ML-DSA protocols, meaning that Symmetrikey is based on proven mathematical problems. To date, no computational shortcuts have been found for RLWE, making it a quantum-safe PQC problem.
In addition to RLWE, Symmetrikey uses correlation filtering. Correlation filtering is a technique borrowed from QKD that enables each party to generate identical keys without having to transmit anything over a public channel that could enable an attacker to guess or compute the key.
Want To Know More About Symmetrikey?
If you’d like to understand more about how Symmetrikey works, we have a scientific paper and a business-focused white paper available upon request. Fill in the form below and we’ll be in touch.