We’re just about to close the door on another year, and at QuintessenceLabs, we can’t believe how much has happened! 2018 was one of our biggest years, with growing recognition, new friends, and great progress with our technology and products. Here’s an insider’s round-up of the year’s happenings.

Our 10th Anniversary

We can’t start talking about 2018 without noting our anniversary! QuintessenceLabs was founded in 2008, marking a full decade of quantum innovation. We’ve come a long way from our prototypes with lasers in bulky boxes, and now we have compact quantum-based random number generators, highly secure data storage, and key management appliances around the world in enterprises, governments and more. Our thanks to every investor, partner, customer and user who brought us to our first decade, and easing us into our next.

A Growing Interest in Security – and Quantum

10 years later, awareness, interest (and rightful concern) about quantum technology have grown dramatically. While the power of this technology will open the door to game-changing developments in fields such as medicine, sensing, and numerical modeling, the security world is on high alert given their proven capability to break some of our most widely used security tools.

Interestingly, quantum technology is also part of the solution to this, in the form of quantum cybersecurity, and QuintessenceLabs and others in the industry are driving ahead in developing the crucial tools needed to protect the world’s data from this quantum computing threat, while the challenge it presents is being voiced even more strongly by thought leaders such as the World Economic Forum, whose 2018 Risk Report ranked cyber attacks higher than ever on its list of threats considered by world powers.

Accolades Aplenty

Speaking of the World Economic Forum, one of the most humbling events was being recognized by the WEF as a Technology Pioneer for 2018! We are honored to be recognized in this way alongside a group of such exciting new technologies, and to follow the big names of previous years such as Google and Airbnb.

Another highlight of 2018 was the TED talk presented by our Founder and CEO, Dr. Vikram Sharma. While the event itself took place in 20017, it was published online in 2018. And just as 2018 started to wind down, the TED video crossed the one-million-view mark. Vikram’s talk is wide-ranging, from the fundamentals of encryption, to the threat of quantum computers, and the work of QuintessenceLabs to fight quantum with quantum. If you want the basics of what we do in an entertaining and accessible format, this is a must-watch:

Last but not least, we recently won the UK Tech Rocketship Award in the category of Digital Economy and Security – an award that will help us in our plans to expand the company to the United Kingdom and beyond.

Starting the Conversation

QuintessenceLabs “went live” directly with a series of webinars to share, directly to partners and customers, the latest on what’s happening in data protection and quantum security. These include topics such as encryption for virtual machines and how VMware vSphere can easily get administrators started, and, building quantum resilience for the future. You can view them by registering via the links to each one. If you have not tried them yet, we hope to have you attend in 2019!

New Faces

Finally, all the achievements of the year would not have been achieved without a strong and growing team. New additions include our new VP of Technology, Andreas Baumhof, formerly CTO at ThreatMetrix, many new faces in engineering and operations, as well as an expanding sales and marketing group — all of whom are helping grow QuintessenceLabs around the globe. We’re excited to have all our new faces onboard to deliver solutions to this quantum challenge!

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This past year for QuintessenceLabs – and indeed, the past 10 – are delivering on a new security promise, that of quantum-enhanced cybersecurity solutions, that can address the most challenging security issues. What’s in store for 2019? Well, we have some thoughts on that, look out for our next post about that in January.