Some information remains sensitive for decades. Protecting it requires looking beyond today’s threats and anticipating technologies that could reshape the rules of digital security.
With this long-term perspective, Ineco is developing PQC-COMM (Post-Quantum Cryptography Communications), a secure communications protocol designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers.
The project is one of six new initiatives selected under Ineco’s 2026 Intrapreneurship Call, an initiative that engaged 120 professionals and attracted 40 proposals.
For PQC-COMM, the challenge is to safeguard the confidentiality of information over the long term. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could compromise many of the cryptographic mechanisms that currently protect digital communications. However, attackers do not need to wait until that capability becomes available. They can intercept encrypted data today, store it and decrypt it years later, once the necessary technology exists. This strategy is known as “harvest now, decrypt later.”
For sectors such as critical transport infrastructure, this possibility makes it essential to take a longer-term view of security. Responsibility for information does not end once it has been shared.
As David Blanco, the project lead, explains: “With PQC-COMM, our aim is to protect information today that must remain confidential ten or even twenty years from now. By anticipating future challenges, Ineco can develop its own expertise and capabilities in a strategic field and place them at the service of our public-sector and transport clients.”
The protocol is based on the new post-quantum cryptography standards established by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It also incorporates its own certification authority, capable of issuing and managing post-quantum digital certificates to verify the identity of communicating systems. In this way, it protects both the content of communications and the identity of the parties involved.
The project already has a prototype operating autonomously 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This achievement illustrates the value of intrapreneurship at Ineco: transforming the knowledge and expertise of its professionals into solutions for challenges that are only beginning to emerge today but will shape the future.
Because innovation is also about asking what must be preserved and acting in time to ensure it remains protected.
