Insider Brief
- Fortaegis has developed a chip-based cybersecurity system that uses the physical randomness of silicon to secure communications, offering speed and resilience against future quantum computer attacks.
- The technology avoids both post-quantum cryptography’s heavy computational demands and quantum key distribution’s fragile optics by generating cryptographic keys from unique, unclonable hardware fingerprints.
- Fortaegis plans to retrofit legacy systems and launch its first products in 2025, positioning its platform as a scalable, low-power solution for defense, autonomous vehicles, and quantum-safe networking.
The cybersecurity threat of quantum computers in the future often disguises the fact that there is a need for better cybersecurity methods right now.
Fortaegis, a semiconductor firm with roots in the Dutch research ecosystem, has developed a chip-based system that makes communications not just significantly faster and secure based on their tests, but, when the time arrives, it will be more resistant to quantum attacks. This added speed and protection does so without relying on the complex math or fragile optics that dominate current approaches.
In an interview, members of the team explained that it is building hardware that uses the inherent physical randomness in silicon chips to secure communication systems against both today’s cyber threats and tomorrow’s quantum computers. The company argues its technology avoids the pitfalls of both post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution,offering a third pillar that complements or could even replace existing methods in some cases, according to Fortaegis.
“Historically, there’s always been a trade-off between performance on the one side and Energy and Security on the other, something has got to give whatever you optimize for,” said Boudewijn Wijnands, Fortaegis Technologies founder. “But what we have done is a breakthrough, which allows our hardware chip to be not just secure, but ultra secure, making use of these physical upload properties we control that phenomenon, but also have solved the problem where security and performance are no longer trade-offs.”
Perfect Imperfections
While most chip engineers try to eliminate the tiny, random differences that happen when each chip is manufactured, Fortaegis’s engineers have made it the core of their approach. These variations, which occur naturally even in high-precision semiconductor fabrication, create what might be described as a digital fingerprint. Known in engineering circles as “physical unclonable functions,” or PUFs, these fingerprints are impossible to predict and cannot be copied.
Wijnands said his team found a way to use those fingerprints to generate cryptographic keys, bypassing software-based methods.
This method offers numerous advantages to some of the roadblocks standing in the way of cybersecurity today – and tomorrow – including the management of certificates.
Certificates are digital credentials used to verify the identity of devices or entities in a network, typically involving the exchange of public keys and authentication information to establish secure communication.
“If you need to send certificates all across, well, that’s gonna hit your latency and we will never get to scaling collaborative AI,” said Wijnands.” But because we rely on the intrinsic properties of the silicon itself, we get rid of all these certificates, too. So we’re actually faster, like even 100 times faster..”
That speed could be existentially important, he added.
“If you look at a drone, if there’s milliseconds or the difference between your drone being living and the other one shot down, it’s a matter of life and death,” Wijnands added.
Unlike post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which relies on complicated mathematical algorithms that strain devices and consume power, you might consider Fortaegis’s method to be much more nimble. Unlike quantum key distribution (QKD), which requires delicate optical hardware and secure transmission environments, Fortaegis’s technology runs on standard silicon – no lasers required.
“Quantum key distribution has, in my opinion, two major problems,” said chip engineer Rahul Vyas. “First, it relies on these heavy instruments, which make it inherently non-scalable. But the second biggest problem with quantum key distribution is authentication.”
Vyas explained that current QKD systems cannot guarantee that the device receiving a key is who it claims to be. Fortaegis addresses this by using PUFs to authenticate the devices before any key exchange begins.
“We have practically solved one of the biggest problems in the quantum key distribution,” Vyas said.
That claim has been tested in collaboration with the Dutch national research institute TNO, which ran a QKD experiment using Fortaegis’s hardware as the classical networking backbone. Fortaegis says it has also drawn interest from quantum research groups in the US, Denmark, and Japan, and that the system could serve as a bridge between classical and quantum communication networks.
“We’re not replacing QKD,” Wijnands said. “But even if you look at the QKD world, you still need our technology for the whole validation and authentication.”
Stand-Alone System
Fortaegis’s chip also acts as a stand-alone system. Vyas said the team developed a proprietary protocol that allows two chips to exchange a symmetric key using only their fingerprints – no RSA, no certificates.
“Our approach is not as expensive as post quantum cryptographic algorithms in terms of computation or power consumption, and, we think it is much more practical and scalable than the quantum key distribution out there,” Vyas added.
The company sees a wide spectrum of applications – and has particular dual use capabilities because its chips are both secure and fast. This helps make a secure foundation for everything from battlefield drones to autonomous vehicles.
“If you imagine a world where every device is going to be connected – from self-autonomous vehicles to your refrigerator – we all feel in our gut that that seems pretty risky,” said Wijnands.
Retrofitting Legacy Systems
Rather than replacing legacy systems, Fortaegis wants to retrofit them.
“People are not going to replace the trillions of dollars spent on the infrastructure,” Wijnands said. “If you can get an old Ford pickup truck from 20 years ago and you can add an AI model to it and make it work—that will be even better.”
The startup is planning its first product launches for late 2025 and early 2026, starting with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for secure networking in defense and semiconductor industry applications. FPGAs are special computer chips that can be reprogrammed after they are made, allowing engineers to customize them for different tasks like speeding up data processing or controlling machines.
By 2028, the company aims to release a custom high-performance chip built on advanced 5nm technology.
Wijnands said it has engaged with military and national security agencies in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, as well as civilian companies interested in high-performance edge computing.
The company says it has no new scientific hurdles to overcome, but they recognize there will be challenges.
“For us, these are engineering challenges instead of scientific ones,” said Vyas. “That includes adapting the chips for extreme environments—such as radiation in space—or building secure AI networks with low-latency communication between autonomous systems.”
While Fortaegis has set an ambitious roadmap for the future, they believe their products are ready to handle problems right now, some of which might not be top-of-mind for businesses and organizations.
In fact, with no need for software-based keys, certificates, or encryption algorithms, the team argues their approach could help solve a looming crisis. Quantum computers may still be years away, but the threat is already real, they said.
“There is a famous terminology which is called ‘harvest now and decrypt later,’” Vyas said. “This essentially means that you just collect all the encrypted information about banks and secret communication, and when quantum computers are out, you’ll decrypt it. This is a wake-up call for organizations that you need to think about quantum safety now, you cannot wait until quantum computers come out.”
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