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KTU professor urges Baltic nations to act on quantum-secure identity

Important | 2025-07-07

Speaking to government cybersecurity leaders and technology executives from across the Baltic region, Professor Šarūnas Grigaliūnas of Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) issued a strong call to action on quantum-secure identity, warning that Lithuania’s digital sovereignty hinges on the timely deployment and interoperability of quantum key distribution (QKD) technologies.

In his presentation titled “Challenges to be Addressed in Implementing QKD Communication with the EuroQCI Network and PQC Compliance Issues”, Professor Grigaliūnas cautioned that without urgent steps to ensure interoperability, emerging quantum communication systems between Vilnius, Kaunas, and the Polish border could remain “islands of secrecy rather than a regional shield.”

Highlighting recent breakthroughs, the professor pointed to successful tests conducted by KTU and other Lithuanian universities, in which quantum keys were exchanged over a 92 km stretch of the LITNET fibre optic network. The experiments demonstrated that Lithuania’s infrastructure is technically ready to support the pan-European EuroQCI quantum communication initiative. The next critical milestone, he said, is connecting these university-based pilots to LTQGate, the national quantum gateway.

Grigaliunas
Šarūnas Grigaliūnas, the Head of Cyber Security Centre of Excellence

This system is designed to interface with Poland’s PIONIER-Q backbone and, eventually, with Latvia through the proposed Lat-LitQN corridor—forming a quantum-secure Baltic route.

Professor Grigaliūnas also warned that rapid advances in artificial intelligence—including real-time voice cloning and deep traffic analysis—are raising the stakes for cryptographic identity and authenticity.

“QKD gives us tamper-proof entropy,” he said, “but security may still be compromised if keys are not distributed or refreshed quickly enough. We must pair quantum keys with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and adopt ETSI/CENELEC standards to ensure interoperability across Lithuania, Poland, and Latvia.”

The presentation also spotlighted the upcoming Eagle-1 satellite mission, set to launch this winter. Eagle-1 will serve as a low-Earth orbit demonstrator for space-to-ground QKD, with the Lithuanian and Polish ground stations playing a central role in building a fault-resilient quantum link across the Baltic region.

Representatives from Toshiba Europe joined the session to share commercial insights, drawing from their experience with the BT–Toshiba Quantum-Secure Metro Network. They showcased results from QKD-protected blockchain testing and voiced support for Professor Grigaliūnas’s call for proactive “collect now, decrypt later” mitigation strategies. Toshiba also demonstrated device-level quantum integration models that could be tailored to Baltic research and government networks.

“We gained valuable insights on the compelling drivers and operational requirements for quantum secure networking across Lithuania and neighbouring countries,” commented Dr Andrew Shields, Vice President of Toshiba Europe, “we will be pleased to work with Professor Grigaliūnas and his colleagues to implement their objectives for EuroQCI and beyond.”

The session concluded with a focused roundtable on expanding QKD services across the LITNET backbone. University researchers and telecommunications engineers agreed to establish an interoperability testbed in Vilnius this Autumn to evaluate multi-vendor equipment and develop service-level agreements. These SLAs are targeted at government, energy, and financial sector clients, aiming to ensure operational readiness by December 31, 2026, when the EU’s initial quantum security compliance deadline takes effect.