On November 29, 2018, NATO awarded the Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Partnership Prize in the field of cyber defense to the multi-year project “Secure Implementation of Post-Quantum Cryptography.” The award ceremony took place at NATO Headquarters in Brussels during the SPS Programme’s 60th anniversary celebration, where NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller presented the prize.
According to NATO, the project “supported collaboration on post-quantum cryptography research with particular focus on the security of cyber infrastructures and of communication channels.” The initiative was led by co-directors from the Slovak University of Technology, Jean Monnet University in France, Tel Aviv University in Israel, and Florida Atlantic University in the United States. NATO’s SPS Programme selected the project as the outstanding multi-year effort in the cyber defense category over the preceding decade.
A successor NATO SPS project, “Quantum-safe Authenticated Group Key Establishment,” launched in 2018 with researchers from Slovakia, Malta, Spain, and the United States, continuing the program’s work on quantum-resistant secure communications.