Quantum News Nexus

There has been a surge of activity around post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and other quantum-safe security measures in recent months, and today it was Broadcom’s turn to take the stage.

(BTW, shouldn’t we just acronymize quantum-safe security as QSS at this point? PQC has been a thing since forever, but the more encompassing QSS just hasn’t caught on… Anyway, on to the news…)

Broadcom said it is shipping what it claims as the world’s first end-to-end “PQC-safe, in-flight network encryption solution” for Fibre Channel storage area networks in the form of its Emulex SecureHBAs (host bus adapters). The company stated in a press release that more than 120,000 Emulex SecureHBAs have shipped on OEM server platforms. 

This announcement comes about four months after Broadcom announced a “quantum-safe” storage area network switch portfolio.

The announcement was supported by Broadcom partner Everpure, the flash data storage company once known as Pure Storage. “Everpure now becomes the industry’s first storage platform to embed Emulex SecureHBAs in its FlashArray product family, completing the end-to-end solution,” the release stated.

“In an era of AI-enabled threats and quantum computing, robust data encryption is table stakes,” added Shawn Hansen, vice president and general manager, Core Platform Business Unit, Everpure. “By embedding Broadcom’s Emulex SecureHBA into our Everpure Platform, Everpure is delivering the industry’s first end-to-end solution for automatic, in-flight encryption using Post-Quantum Cryptography. Crucially, this standards-based approach secures data between servers and arrays without compromising performance or sacrificing essential storage services like compression and deduplication.”

There should no longer be a need to answer the “Why now?” question when talking about PQC, but Broadcom answered that anyway, noting the need “to protect data transfers end-to-end, from application servers to storage, providing protection against harvest now, decrypt later (HNDL) attacks.” 

“As enterprise customers recognize that HNDL attacks present an ever-increasing threat, closing an infrastructure’s security vulnerabilities becomes a corporate imperative. Extending an enterprise’s Encrypt Everything policy from today’s data-at-rest encryption to include PQC-safe in-flight network encryption is the next obvious step for securing mission critical data,” said Jeff Hoogenboom, vice president and general manager, Emulex Connectivity Division, Broadcom.

In concert with the Emulex SecureHBA, Broadcom also announced Emulex SAN Manager 3.0 Podman-based software solution. Adding security compliance reporting, the Emulex SAN Manager 3.0 enables administrators to easily identify and manage encrypted ports across the entire Fibre Channel environment, simplifying CNSA 2.0, and NIS2/DORA reporting, compliance and data classification.

AI-generated image from freepik.

Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.