As a result, organizations are revisiting their security strategies to ensure they are doing everything they can to protect their data. The ongoing security threats, including headlines about fiber cable intrusions, reinforce the need for robust in-flight optical encryption.

Optical encryption protects data transmission by encrypting the original data into cipher text. Without knowing the key for the encryption process, the hacker cannot recover the data. Optical encryption uses fiber-based devices. They have low latency and high processing speed; thus, the network is protected without compromising its transmission speed. Moreover, optical encryption is intrinsically immune to attacks based on the electromagnetic signature of a signal.

Modern enterprises, financial institutions, government agencies, network operators, and service providers rely on business-critical data. With the increasing value of confidential data generated and transmitted across networks, confidential data has become even more attractive to thieves and intruders. Also, more and more important information comes from video and images. Besides, considering the cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the proliferation of diverse data centers, the security of information over internet becomes a serious issue as the transmitted data can be, at any moment, intercepted and extracted by non-authorized people.

Cybersecurity is a hot topic that is not to be taken lightly. This is why considerable effort is being devoted at the current time to data encryption with multiple security levels.

For a higher security level, fiber-optic quantum key distribution is currently being investigated. Indeed, it could effectively protect the encryption process by encoding the key information on the quantum states of a single photon. Moreover, one important property for quantum key distribution is that it can indicate the existence of an eavesdropper trying to receive any information about the key.

To reply to such a challenge, SEDI-ATI has recently realized fiber optic hermetic feedthroughs and patch-cords dedicated to cryogenic applications which are required for quantum optics cryptography demonstration.

Since many years, SEDI-ATI has been developing and manufacturing multimode wavelength division multiplexers and optical couplers with very high directivity. SEDI-ATI has designed, built and demonstrated reliable solutions that are currently in the field, such as custom modules implementing those fiber-based components. Today, these reliable and secured modules fully optically isolate strategic data centers.