QuSecure passed another set of fundamental milestones exceeding our expectations in quality and quantity. This past quarter, QuSecure launched our QuEverywhereTM product, which can quickly create quantum-resilient communications for any device or application. This quarter we successfully installed our suite of QuProtectTM quantum resilient products at a major payment gateway provider (21 million wallets), a Fortune 500 data services company, and a 500,000-person consulting services firm. In addition, we signed agreements with a large technology distributor and its federal government reseller. We are working on an agreement to test integrating our products into the Linux operating system of the world’s largest open-source software provider. Our Federal Operations team and our Head of Compliance are on the way to completing our NIST 800-171 compliance requirements with the Federal Government for handling controlled unclassified information. Our marketing and branding teams have pushed beyond our expectations as media hits from press mentions topped one billion, with QuSecure featured in publications like Forbes and Newsweek. We produced a new 2-minute explainer video featuring QuSecure’s co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Rebecca Krauthamer. We want to let all of you know that we appreciate our staff, partners, investors, and friends. Thank you for supporting QuSecure as we continue our journey toward a more secure future. Please read below for more details on our accomplishments.
On December 21, 2022, President Biden signed H.R.7535, now Public Law 117-260 – The Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act – mandating that federal government agencies identify and evaluate technology that will protect against quantum computing attacks. QuSecure applauds this new law as this marks a significant milestone in the global effort to develop and deploy quantum-resilient cybersecurity. The U.S. must move quickly against the coming quantum computing threat since considerable effort and years are needed to upgrade existing federal and commercial technology and cryptography.
After our product launch, our goal has centered around product quality. We have been improving QuEverywhere and QuNetwork to offer better-than-industry-standard coverage, support, uptime, failover, and platform support. We are delighted to announce the launch of QuEverywhere and QuNetwork beta – two products that will protect data no matter where it resides. Our solutions ensure that data remains secure against traditional and emerging threats, whether on-premises or cloud-based, between devices and users. With these tools in place, we can provide security for every device on any system worldwide.
We are particularly excited about QuNetwork, our next-generation network security platform. Using a unified interface, users can securely manage access control, protection policies, and data encryption for any data that passes between servers, applications, and even on-premises and hybrid cloud ecosystems.
QuEverywhere now offers post-quantum security for any website and application – with zero installation effort required on edge devices and no change in end-user experience. Even more, benefits include the following:
QuEverywhere and QuNetwork are installed at several customer and partner sites. These installations provide valuable feedback that will be incorporated along with new QuProtect features. The first is a performance-oriented milestone release in Q1, followed by a functionality product release in Q2 2023. Stay tuned for more updates on our Post-Quantum Cybersecurity journey! We are committed to providing the best PQC solutions, training resources, and tools to ensure organizations remain quantum secure. We look forward to continuing this journey with you into a quantum-safe future. Get ready to stay protected no matter where your data travels!
This past quarter, QuSecure deployed paid proof-of-concept projects in three customer sites, including a major payments platform (21m users), a Fortune 500 technology and data services provider, and the U.S. Army (see below). All deployments have received rave reviews and are all operating as planned. QuSecure has a pipeline of many more commercial accounts, and we are aggressively pursuing more installations of QuProtect.
We are excited that large, super-scaler partners have chosen QuSecure to go to market, including one of the largest global technology distribution firms, a 500,000-person consulting services firm, a 2,300-person government IT distribution firm, and the world’s largest commercial distributor of Linux software. These super-scalers will help QuSecure distribute our post-quantum cybersecurity products to the hundreds of thousands of technology manufacturers, service providers, and government agencies. Through these partners, QuSecure will benefit from thousands of sales representatives to bring our QuProtect solution to federal and commercial customers. We are launching programs with all of these partners in Q1 of 2023 to help ensure that QuSecure remains a leading post-quantum cybersecurity solution provider.
Our Federal Operations team spent the fourth quarter of 2022 preparing and answering requests for USG contracts from over a half-dozen Federal agencies while strengthening our existing Federal Operations solution. Now that the mid-term elections are behind us and the National Defense Authorization Act is signed, opportunities will open in the coming quarters for QuSecure to provide solutions across different classified levels and operational environments. These contracts will further QuSecure’s use in Federal post-quantum communication. Federal customers are asking QuSecure to implement post-quantum communications protocol development on numerous systems, including ground, air, and space.
Last summer, we deployed a Beta version of our capability to NORAD/NORTHCOM to demonstrate a post-quantum resilient communications channel using a photonic-based Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) to create a 256-bit post-quantum resilient symmetric session key with randomized key rotation, delivered via the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm. This successful demonstration marked the completion of our first task order of our Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase III award and the first successful demonstration of post-quantum resilient communications for the US Government. As a result, over a dozen other Federal groups and agencies have approached QuSecure to develop quantum-resilient projects for their organizations.
Building on the success of our first task order, we are negotiating a second task order for our SBIR Phase III award. We have several options for a second task order, one of which is participation in DTE ANR (Office of Secretary of Defense Digital Transformation Experiment in Alaska NORAD Region), which will involve a much larger deployment across classified levels of our national defense agencies. We implemented compliance measures and hardened our solution to participate in the experiment. This allows the USG to issue an IATT (Interim Authority to Test) with our next contract/Phase III Task Order, meaning QuSecure will deploy and test in higher classification levels. As other USG agencies learned of QuSecure’s excellent compliance work, nine potential government customers interested in QuSecure’s solution requested and received this IATT package for their senior leaders to review.
QuSecure is now halfway through the performance period for our Phase I SBIR with the US Army ASA(ALT). Over the past three months, we completed technical discussions with numerous Army customers interested in procuring QuSecure’s technology at the end of the SBIR period of performance. In March of 2023, QuSecure will deliver a technical and market study for use cases across the US Army and in the commercial sector. This study will validate our USG technical and commercial market merit. Furthermore, it will bring a natural bridge to reach further customers across the Army.
This past quarter we dramatically accelerated our federal go-to-market strategy with several significant channel relationships (see above). We expect this will open many more doors and allow us to scale rapidly by utilizing their vast sales forces and marketplaces. We are excited to kickstart 2023 with our new channel partners and help secure the US Government with quantum resilience.
In support of our Federal efforts, the Compliance and Information Security teams hired CoalFire to assess our current levels of compliance. This past quarter, we have reviewed the CoalFire gap analysis, prioritized the gaps, and identified the remediation efforts associated with NIST 800-171 requirements (i.e., Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations). Our next steps will be creating a System Security Plan (SSP) and remediation plans for the partially/not implemented requirements, also referred to as a POA&M (Plan of Action & Milestones) by the government. In support of our commercial efforts, the Compliance team has evaluated vendor solutions to streamline our compliance efforts. The vendor has been selected and should provide a compliance automation tool that aligns with our compliance framework and reduces the time it takes to complete key audits and certifications (e.g., SOC 2).
During the second half of 2022, we focused on strengthening the foundations of our people strategies, preparing us for significant growth in the organization in 2023. These strategies included:
As we look ahead at the exciting opportunities for QuSecure in 2023, our people strategies have been aligned with our 2023 corporate strategies to ensure we focus on the organization’s and our team members’ needs. Our plan for 2023 includes the following:
Aligning our corporate and people strategies will improve business performance and give QuSecure a competitive advantage.
We ended 2022 with notable accomplishments in building intellectual property protection for the business. Our patent team has submitted 21 applications, including filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) office. In addition, we filed three U.S. trademark applications – a first-time effort at QuSecure.
Our latest three PCT applications focused on innovations in QuProtect for web application implementations. Significantly, PCT clearance on these applications will allow us to move to national-stage filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the patent offices in Australia, Canada, Japan, and the European Patent Office (EPO). When the EPO grants our applications, that will lead to national patents in the U.K., Germany, and other European countries. In other words, these latest three applications will lead to a patent family with a total of 15-20 worldwide patents when approved. This work continues to deepen the moat protecting our critical assets.
In December, our trademark work resulted in three new trademark applications – one for QuSecureTM, QuProtectTM, and QuEverywhereTM. Our branding efforts will solidify our customers’ association with first-of-a-kind quantum encryption technology with QuSecure.
Building the most recognized brand in quantum resilient security and, even more broadly, data security is a bold goal. The QuSecure Marketing team is working to make QuSecure synonymous with quantum-resilient data security. In time, we want businesses and government agencies to confidently claim that their networks, systems, and devices are “QuProtected.” Here are a few examples of what we accomplished over the last quarter:
Media: Hits from Press mentions from the media topped one billion for the eight months through December.
Awards: QuSecure won 2 awards during the fourth quarter, including:
Education: Our continuing efforts to bolster our leadership position in quantum cybersecurity were enhanced last quarter by adding new social media campaigns and a new educational Resources page to our website.
Thought Leadership: QuSecure continued to build its thought leadership via numerous articles written and published to showcase our intellectual prowess and technical expertise in quantum resilient solutions, including:
Revenue Enablement: As our product development expands, we continue developing and growing our toolkit to enable our sales, business development, and super-scaler partner teams to generate new customers and revenue.
Events: QuSecure was active in both attending events and producing webinars, including:
QuSecure completed the first 1/3 of our Series A round, and we are in conversation with several venture firms and family offices for the remainder. We are tightly managing expenses and optimizing our cash burn to ensure QuSecure maximizes our runway as we move towards production/monthly recurring revenue. We have completed the 2023 planning process and have our goals and objectives in place for 2023.
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© 2023 Copyright QuSecure, Inc.
© 2023 Copyright QuSecure, Inc.
