Arqit’s Jay Coffey on building secure, agile cyber infrastructure

Joining me now here on stage is Jay Coffey. He is the Vice President Federal at ARKIT for our next one-on-one industry interview

And as Jay comes out, I believe we have a video we're going to take a look at from the team at ARKIT as well

All right, there we go. All right, Jay Coffey, Vice President of Federal at ARCID

Thanks a lot for being here. Yeah, you're welcome. So first, a bit of an introduction to you and your work at ARCID for anyone watching at home who might be a bit unfamiliar

Yeah, so Vice President of ARCID. ARCID is a post-quantum cryptography company

We're basically looking to solve the challenges of the next generation of encryption

And again, we do that with software-based dynamic capabilities. And my role is to make sure that we're driving that capability within the U.S. government

and the federal and defense departments in the United States here. What are some of the lessons specifically throughout the day

We've been talking about the Indo-Pacific region. I wonder lessons from that region or Ukraine, among others

that are shaping the way that mobile tech is being used in warfare. Yeah, I mean, the way I kind of view this is I kind of take a script from MITRE's attack framework, you know, the tactic techniques and procedures, right

These adversaries that we have, they're advanced threats, right? I mean, they're constantly what you're discussing right there, right

Those are the most outward facing and visible signs that we see that are these threats, right

But the threat is global in its landscape. And with regards to like how we look at that and, you know, for example, MITRE, we have to start looking at ways that we treat these as real time incidents and making sure that we have solutions technologies that are able to be resilient, dynamic and sort of take the first hit, if you will

Right. I mean, that's what a lot of the government is focused on right now

They're they have a lot of these older systems, legacy systems. And when they try to maneuver or try to change and shift, that's where a lot of the issues kind of come in

So, you know, our roles within industry is to try to start making those kind of capabilities much more robust

much more dynamic so that they can support these real-world situations in Ukraine and

Indo-PACOM as well as within everyday civilian life. Can you talk to me a bit about quantum-safe

cryptography? That is a phrase that sounds awesome, and I got to admit, I don't know a lot

about it, and I'm going to assume there's at least one person out there that might not also know a lot about it. So what is it, and what does it mean to your work that you do at ARCA

So it is a loaded word, right, or a loaded. Quantum means a lot of things to a lot of different people

For us specifically, PQC, the post-quantum cryptography, right, that is the threat eventually of a quantum-relevant computer

to be able to undermine and break all of the existing public key infrastructure today

So when we look at this from an exchange of any data from public to private

over the Internet or any kind of other communications that all uses public key infrastructure

And NIST has been working on this for the last eight or nine years around some new advancements and algorithms

that will hopefully be able to support that next generation of encryption

so that we don't have something that can, an adversary that can come in and break all of our existing public key infrastructure

So from that aspect, those are the kind of challenges that we're working on

NIST as well as others. There's an asymmetric versus symmetric. So there's a lot of things

to kind of get in the weeds. But again, the good thing is that there are companies focused on this

now. There are a lot of initiatives and mandates out there, and we're just happy to be part of it

What are the top risks that keep you up at night? The thing that keeps me up at night is that there's a lot of talk and there's a lot of rhetoric

around, hey, we're doing things quicker, faster. But there's still a lot of the old regime in terms

of the specific policies and processes and other things that I don't believe are changing quick

enough. We need to be able to kind of do things to adopt at speed and scale. And a lot of this is

not really a technology issue. It's definitely more of a people and process issue. So the thing

that keeps me up at night is the fact that, you know, we continue to sort of look at the old ways

in which we've done things and not really kind of taking these paradigm shifts and looking at it in

a whole new way of how to make something that less complexity, right? Make it just easier to

execute and adopt. How would you say our allies are approaching quantum safe or zero trust defenses

and are there key lessons to be learned from them? Yeah, so our allied nations are rallying around us

They are definitely looking at this, again, from an investment and priority perspective

I still think we a little bit behind but definitely over in the UK they take this quite a bit more seriously They trying to drive a lot of the initiatives around PQC and some of those other dynamics that are kind of happening in play here

But I think there's a situation where we need to come together a little bit better and kind of create these alignments around some of these larger issues

You know, similar to kind of like what we do back in the 50s and 60s around the atomic bomb and things like that

I'm not saying this is maybe that kind of situation, but again, kind of rallying how the people look at a problem and, you know, support that or meet those challenges

What do you see as being some of the biggest gaps between policy and technology right now

the biggest gaps between policy and technology i would say that right now the the gap really is in

you know back to the the process and procedures right like they they keep kind of creating these

uh you know artificial um ways in which we have to like kind of jump through hoops and i just

I see that as very difficult because all that does is increase complexity

We need to find ways to strip that away and to make it much more easy because a lot of this technology, it can be easily assumed and adopted and it helps support the stuff that's happening today

But again, everybody sees the priorities and the focus and I think that's what kind of like AI, everything is AI today, right

So that is what dictates a lot of the policy, right? So it's being more forward thinking and having more of the coalition of the willing is a way to kind of prevent that from happening

Jag, about less than a minute or so with you left, some of the single biggest changes you would expect to see in the information warfare space, even in just the next few years

Yeah. So, again, war is changing us, right? And again, the way that we perceive what war is, is also changing us

Understanding the threat, a lot of people have said it, just being aware. I think that is a big factor in all this

Having some of the awareness and the ability, that is going to help drive the change that we need from an adoption standpoint with some of these newer and emerging technologies

And again, I'm just glad that ARCID is a part of that

and we're leaning forward to protect this nation. All right, Jay Coffey of ARCA

really grateful for your time and perspective. Thanks a lot for joining us. One more time here for our special guest

Thank you. Appreciate your time. I appreciate it. Great to have you. Thank you

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