IDEMIA vs PQShield

About PQShield

PQShield is a cybersecurity company specialising in post-quantum cryptography. PQShield develops and commercially deploys quantum-ready cryptographic solutions for hardware, software and communications. PQShield is headquartered in Oxford, with additional teams in the Netherlands and France.

PQShield states that quantum computers will soon be able to break current cryptography methods. PQShield aims its quantum-resistant hardware and software solutions at organizations, industries and nations. PQShield says the cryptography that keeps data, devices, connections and components secure must be modernized to align with the new NIST global standards. Public key cryptography, including RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), faces the greatest quantum risk. Post-quantum cryptography can be deployed on existing classical hardware today. Adversaries can harvest encrypted information now and decrypt it later when quantum capabilities mature.^[4]

The PQShield team comprises post-quantum cryptographers, researchers and engineers. PQShield says its team has been actively involved in the international standardization of post-quantum algorithms. Customers are helped to evaluate existing infrastructure, determining the risk and agility of the underlying architecture. The PQShield team works alongside, or as part of, a customer's wider team to deploy end-to-end solutions. PQShield products are aimed at vendors building PQC into greenfield and brownfield products. Device manufacturers have chosen PQShield’s PQC IP for integration into hardware security solutions.^[4][10]

PQShield has a reciprocal agreement with Kudelski Security, the cybersecurity division within the Kudelski Group. Under that agreement, PQShield will offer expert training and advisory services to clients of Kudelski, alongside post-quantum cryptography solutions for both software and hardware. The agreement includes a collaborative referral and co-marketing relationship to support Kudelski Security’s go-to-market strategy. PQShield has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with systems integrator Tata Consultancy Services to help its clients transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solutions. PQShield has partnered with eShard, a provider of side-channel analysis and testing tools.^[11]

PQShield offers post-quantum cryptography for embedded devices in as little as 5KB RAM. PQMicroLib-Core is a library designed with flexibility and configurability in mind. A CAVP-Ready version of PQCryptoLib-Core is tailored for embedded systems, small footprint solutions and memory constrained devices. PQCryptoLib-Core is a FIPS 140-3 CMVP Certified / CAVP Compliant general-purpose cryptographic library designed for a wide variety of applications. PQCryptoLib-Core is configurable by a secure API. PQCryptoLib-SDK is a plug-and-play tool that helps to transition OpenSSL-based applications to quantum resilience. Software implementations of PQC algorithms are supplied via an OpenSSL provider, including ML-DSA, Falcon, ML-KEM and hybrid PQ/T schemes for TLS.^[1][4][10]

PQPlatform-CoPro is a cryptographic coprocessor designed to add post-quantum capabilities to an existing security subsystem. PQPerform-Flare is a hardware-based FIPS 140-3 CAVP-certified product designed for high throughput and low latency PQC. PQPerform-Flare supports ML-DSA (FIPS 204) and ML-KEM (FIPS 203) and is optimized for TLS. Building on the architecture of PQPerform-Flare, Inferno integrates multiple instances with load balancing, and can deliver over 1 million key encapsulations per second. PQPerform-Flex combines PQPerform-Inferno with a RISC-V processor to form a complete subsystem.^[1][10]

PQShield products come in 4 security levels to address all use cases. The security levels are tested continuously by both PQShield and external labs for certification.^{[1][4][5][6][7][8][10]}