OUR STORY

From concept to possession factor

QSA Technology’s origins lie 15 years ago, when Boris Škorić at Eindhoven University of Technology combined his knowledge of QKD with the nascent field of optical physical unclonable functions to create the quantum readout protocols we’re built on.

Over the next decade and a half, those protocols were put through the wringer at the University of Twente, in the group of Pepijn Pinkse, leading to three patent families, now licensed to QSA Technology, and the inception of the quantum credit card.

Pepijn Pinkse with the quantum secure authentication demonstrator and a quantum credit card.
A beam of light passing through a glass block and emerging as a glowing fingerprint.

But the pivot came 5 years ago with the realisation that we needed to go back to our roots, back to the application PUFs and QKD fit natively: optical communications. The step that made it possible was the conception of the photonic integrated circuit PUF, the realisation that every circuit, down to the level of a few atoms, is unique, and that this uniqueness can be exploited as an optical PUF, one now addressable through frequency-modulated signals.

That’s where QSA Technology was really born. Several years of chip testing later, we were founded to introduce the world to a fully optical, hardware-rooted authentication tool, ready for the quantum-secure optical networks of the future. Our ultimate vision: guard the ends of your optical links, right at the interconnects and the transceivers, as the first layer of protection, so your systems can trust the origin of data coming in from the network before it even gets in.