Vibrint has partnered with QED to develop services tailored to quantum safety in the federal government’s key infrastructures, defense and intelligence.

Through the collaboration, the team intends to aid federal customers as they prepare for “Q” day, or the expected moment when quantum physics breaks the barrier of current encryption protocols, Vibrint announced from Annapolis Junction, Maryland on Tuesday.

Tom Lash, CEO of Vibrint, said he is excited to work with QED due to their “creative and skilled technology people” having the potential to take both companies to the next level.

“Their incredible innovations in post-quantum cryptography and quantum random number generation align perfectly with our mission to deliver cutting-edge solutions to national security organizations,” Lash continued. “Together, we can provide unparalleled security for our clients’ most critical infrastructures.”

CEO of QED Jesse Van Grivensen is ready to battle the threat of quantum computing alongside Vibrint.

“These solutions are not only built to address today’s vulnerabilities but also designed to adapt and evolve with future advancements in quantum-resistant algorithms,” Grivensen said. “[Vibrint’s and QED’s] close relationships within the national security community, and their passion for driving rapid solutions for customers’ most critical mission challenges, open opportunities for providing valuable support at an important time. By teaming up, we are bringing advanced tech to secure systems from on-site to the cloud to the tip of the spear, helping safeguard forces, systems and America’s most vital assets.”

Vibrint and QED will showcase their quantum solutions at the HPE Conference this week in Las Vegas.

The Department of Energy has released a notice of intent indicating its plan to provide up to $900 million in funding for initial deployments of Generation III+ small modular reactor technologies in the U.S.

SMRs are sufficiently versatile to be deployed in various settings not only to meet small, localized power demand but also larger energy requirements by being scaled up or paired with renewable sources, the DOE said Monday.

In relation to the funding effort, an informational webinar will be held on July 9, an industry day will take place in August and a funding solicitation will be released in late summer or in the fall.

Funding will be offered in two tiers. The first tier will provide up to $800 million to support two teams that will work to deploy a first plant and facilitate a multi-reactor Gen III+ SMR orderbook. The second tier will provide up to $100 million for additional Gen III+ SMR deployments.

Commenting on the notice of intent, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said, “Today’s announcement will support early movers in the nuclear sector as we seek to scale up nuclear power and reassert American leadership in this critical energy industry.”

Granholm also described nuclear energy as “the nation’s single largest source of carbon free electricity” and “a key pillar of our nation’s transition to a safe and secure clean energy future.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has released the initial public draft of an internal report on creating comprehensive data protection strategies for cloud-native applications.

The NIST Internal Report 8505, titled “A Data Protection Approach for Cloud-Native Applications,” outlines a framework for creating effective data protection strategies to ensure the security of information stored in cloud-native applications by using WebAssembly’s capabilities, the agency said Friday.

WebAssembly is a platform-agnostic binary instruction format with compute and traffic processing capabilities that can execute codes at native speed in a fault-tolerant manner.

According to the IR, a cloud-native environment requires a comprehensive strategy to analyze and categorize data access and leakage as data moves across various network protocols.

NIST said it is essential to develop a data categorization strategy that performs real-time analysis of data in transit.