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NPL researcher gives an invited talk on data security at Quantum UK 2016 

The Quantum UK 2016 Conference was held at the University of Birmingham in September. A theme of the conference was on the skills acquired in Quantum Technology, and there were around 100 attendees. NPL researcher, Christopher Chunnilall, gave an invited talk entitled ‘Metrology for secure quantum communications’.

With increasing amounts of data being sent and stored across networks, there is a pressing need to ensure data security. The presentation described the skills developed by NPL, through work co-funded by the EMRP (Metrology for Industrial Quantum Communications (IND06 MIQC)) and Innovate UK, to characterise the quantum optical components and modules of quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. QKD provides two parties with a perfectly-secure random key which can be used to encrypt and decrypt messages, offering a level of security beyond that possible with current systems.

These skills also enabled NPL to lead the drafting of an ETSI Group Specification for characterising the quantum optical components of such systems. This is the first measurement standard for a quantum technology. It underpins current work to characterise devices, developed by the UK Quantum Communications Hub, and work in EMPIR project Optical metrology for quantum enhanced secure telecommunication (14IND05 MIQC2) to verify the performance of physical counter-measures to specific hacking attacks.