“Meet and Greet” with the PQ-REACT Open Call#1-Develop beneficiaries.

Five organisations across Europe are the beneficiaries of the PQ-REACT Open Call#1-DEVELOP. Over the next six months, we will collaborate closely with them to bring their innovative ideas to life and materialise their proposals.

Let’s have a “Quantum coffee sip” with CREAPLUS.
CREAPLUS is a consulting, implementation, value-added distribution and software development firm focused comprehensively on IT security.

Their project title is “Analysis and Optimisation of PQC Algorithms for Firmware Signing”, and they chose Use Case 1 (Smart Grid Meters).

First, congratulations on your win! Can you tell us about your organisation and your journey into quantum science?

Thank you for the congratulations! CREAPLUS is an SME based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. We are primarily a value-added distributor for cryptographic and cybersecurity solutions, but we have branched out into software development, AI development and cryptographic consulting as well. Our journey into post-quantum cryptography (PQC) began in 2019 when we hosted our first webinar on the topic. Since then, we’ve partnered with the German company Utimaco to implement PQC algorithms in HSM firmware, gaining valuable practical experience.

We’ve attended some key PQC conferences, both in Europe and remotely in the USA, and have been actively raising awareness through webinars, university lectures, and similar initiatives. These efforts reflect our commitment to advancing and promoting PQC as a crucial technology for the future.

What motivated you to participate in the PQ-REACT Open Call#1?

Our team has been deeply engaged in exploring various PQC migration projects, including experimenting with hybrid X.509 certificates that incorporate both RSA and ML-DSA keys. The chance to contribute to such a pivotal cryptographic migration is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we were eager to dedicate more time and effort to this critical work. However, without funding, advancing a concrete project was a challenge, leading us to actively seek opportunities in the PQC space. The PQ-REACT Open Call#1 arrived at the perfect time, and as soon as we learned about it, we knew we had to apply.

Can you tell us a few words about your project? The initial idea behind the proposal, its future impact and application?

Out of the four possible topics, the one related to firmware signing on smart meters stood out as the most relevant to us. We were well-versed in the trade-offs inherent to this domain—speed of signature verification, security level, public key size, algorithm choice, and the distinction between stateful and stateless approaches. These considerations are ubiquitous across nearly every PQC use case. Given the diversity of these use cases, a successful migration demands a thorough evaluation of each, ensuring the impacts of algorithm transitions are fully understood. We hope the resulting benchmarks and trade-off analysis from this Open Call will guide companies in selecting the right parameters for their future PQC migrations.

What do you believe is the most exciting and important aspect of quantum technologies from your point of view? And how this will impact society?

Since our team focuses primarily on cryptographic aspects, our work intersects less with the development of quantum technologies themselves and more with their immediate implications. The community anticipates that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer could potentially break the asymmetric cryptography currently in use. In response, we are preparing for a transition to post-quantum cryptography—algorithms that remain secure against quantum attacks while running on traditional hardware.

This decade is exceptionally thrilling for cryptographers, as we are reimagining the design of cryptographic protocols, tailoring implementations to diverse use cases, and addressing novel challenges. Our ultimate aim is to ensure that this migration to post-quantum cryptography is as seamless and efficient as possible.

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