Preparation of a Eurogrant application planned under the Horizon Europe programme

What is the aim of the project?

The aim is to prepare complete application documentation and the necessary analyses to support the submission of a high-quality Eurogrant proposal concerning new cybersecurity and network communication solutions for future hybrid classical–quantum networks.

What will the planned Eurogrant cover?

The planned Eurogrant will concern the development of a concept, a reference architecture and a research demonstrator of a modular trust layer for multi-domain and multi-vendor environments, combining post-quantum cryptography (PQC), quantum key distribution (QKD) and at least one cryptographic primitive or protocol extending beyond QKD.

What is the objective of the planned R&D work?

The R&D objective is to create a coherent security mechanism that enables secure negotiation of system operating modes, cryptographic parameters, failover rules and auditability requirements. The work will involve generating new knowledge, examining the feasibility of new solutions, designing and verifying prototypes, and assessing their suitability under laboratory and simulated conditions.

Scope of the planned Eurogrant

In particular, the planned Eurogrant will include:

• defining trust layers for network communications and operating profiles for different security options;
• developing interoperability protocols, compatibility negotiation and parameter agreement between systems from different vendors;
• developing rules for secure degradation and failover if access to a quantum resource is lost;
• developing one or two protocols or cryptographic primitives beyond QKD, together with an assessment of their security assumptions and integration with PQC and QKD;
• developing integration interfaces to support migration and interoperability among systems using PQC, QKD and beyond-QKD approaches;
• preparing a research demonstrator to verify the proposed architecture;
• testing interoperability, operational overhead, performance and the stability of failover mechanisms;
• comparing the proposed solution with a variant relying exclusively on post-quantum cryptography (PQC-only);
• preparing a test environment for multi-domain and multi-vendor scenarios.

What will the planned Eurogrant deliver?

The planned Eurogrant is expected to deliver a specification of a modular trust layer for hybrid classical–quantum networks, a reference architecture, compatibility negotiation and failover protocols, one or two protocol solutions beyond QKD, a security and performance analysis and a research demonstrator for validating the proposed solutions.

What will this project deliver?

The result will be a complete Eurogrant proposal ready for submission and meeting the formal and substantive requirements of the European Commission.

This will enable the applicant to seek funding for R&D into a new interoperable, fault-tolerant trust layer for future hybrid classical–quantum networks.

Project funding