The IT Nerd

SandboxAQ is providing its technology and expertise to the Department of War (DoW) Chief Information Officer (CIO) to accelerate the discovery and inventory of cryptographic assets within the DoW’s environment. This is a foundational step for a managed transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and supports overall cyber readiness.

Building on SandboxAQ’s successful demonstration of its advanced capabilities in quantum-resistant cryptography during a prototype project with DISA Emerging Technology’s QRC PKI program, the DoW CIO is now leveraging the company’s AQtive Guard platform for comprehensive, automated cryptographic discovery and inventory (ACDI) across its systems. This strategic move comes as organizations face increasing pressure to modernize their cybersecurity infrastructure in the face of sophisticated AI-powered attacks, a proliferation of non-human identities, and the looming threat of quantum computing. With Gartner warning that “quantum computing will render traditional cryptography unsafe by 2029,” migrating to PQC is a crucial step that agencies must urgently take as part of a broader modernization effort to secure critical systems.

AQtive Guard provides a centralized platform for managing cryptographic security, empowering organizations to efficiently discover and inventory cryptographic assets and dependencies within their environment. This agreement paves the way for other DoW agencies to access and implement AQtive Guard, enabling a foundational understanding of their cryptographic footprint across the department. AQtive Guard provides agencies with continuous visibility into cryptographic assets, enabling them to anticipate and counter emerging threats as AI adoption accelerates and systems increase in complexity.

Visit the website to learn more about SandboxAQ or book a demo here.

SandboxAQ today announced the general availability of AQtive Guard, a groundbreaking platform designed to manage and secure Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and other cryptographic assets used by AI agents – both friendly and malevolent – that are surging across enterprise environments.

As billions of AI agents flood enterprise ecosystems, organizations are facing an unprecedented surge of intelligent, adaptive cyber threats capable of continuously probing networks, evading detection, and rapidly exploiting vulnerabilities. This escalating threat demands proactive, AI-driven cryptographic defenses to counteract attacks that evolve faster than traditional security measures can respond.

AQtive Guard’s Discover module enables organizations to maintain an accurate inventory and control over both NHIs and cryptographic assets such as keys, certificates, algorithms, and libraries, and is crucial for compliance and meeting regulatory mandates. AQtive Guard’s Protect orchestrates automated remediation workflows and enforces protection policies such as credential rotation or certificate renewal.

Leveraging its industry-leading Large Quantitative Models (LQMs), AQtive Guard’s Discover and Protect modules provide organizations with unprecedented visibility, control and remediation, addressing the escalating challenges of machine-to-machine communication security, compliance pressures, and the transition to the new NIST security standards.

As part of the launch, SandboxAQ also announced two key capabilities:

• Robust integration with the CrowdStrike Falcon^® cybersecurity platform, representing SandboxAQ’s deepest technical integration to date. AQtive Guard empowers joint customers with full visibility into their non-human identity and cryptographic inventories and vulnerabilities by pulling data directly from CrowdStrike endpoints. One-click ingestion translates to value from the first hour of use. AQtive Guard can then remediate the vulnerabilities as they are identified.  
• Interoperability with Palo Alto Networks, a trusted name in enterprise security solutions. SandboxAQ is ingesting Palo Alto Networks’ firewall logs directly into AQtive Guard, resulting in key visibility improvements for network security posture, vulnerability detection, and security compliance.

AQtive Guard addresses these challenges by providing a unified, AI-driven solution for modern NHI and cryptography management. The platform offers:

• Vulnerability Detection and Inventory: Builds a complete and continuously updated inventory by integrating data from multiple sources, including existing data and meta-information captured from existing cybersecurity platforms and configuration management database tools. AQtive Guard works across the leading cloud providers including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud (GCP). This unified global inventory forms the crucial foundation for LQM analysis.
• AI-powered Insights, Prioritization and Risk Analysis: Applies SandboxAQ’s industry-leading Cyber LQM to the unified inventory. By leveraging meta-data for advanced filtering and clustering, the platform enables efficient, noiseless exploration and accurate root-cause analysis, and delivers prioritized, actionable insights with contextual guidance for remediation and risk reduction, effectively reducing false positives. An integrated GenAI assistant further supports teams in understanding how to navigate relevant standards and regulatory frameworks.
• Automated Remediation and Lifecycle Management: Streamlines and automates the entire lifecycle of identities and cryptographic keys – including issuance, rotation, and revocation – reducing manual overhead and minimizing the risk associated with stale or compromised secrets.
• Compliance and NIST Standards: Provides targeted remediation recommendations, a powerful query engine with pre-built rulesets for major compliance standards (and custom query capabilities), and robust reporting to demonstrate compliance and significantly accelerate migration to new NIST standards.

Priority Access Starts Today: AQtive Guard launches today as a fully managed, cloud-delivered platform built for rapid deployment and immediate impact in securing cryptographic assets and nonhuman identities. Organizations can secure priority access today for early deployment and risk assessments. Take control at aqtiveguard.com or contact sales@sandboxaq.com.

 SandboxAQ has announced that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has officially selected HQC (Hamming Quasi-Cyclic) as the fifth algorithm in its suite of post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) standards. Out of these five algorithms, three will be used for signatures. The other two, HQC and ML-KEM, will be the NIST-approved algorithms that will protect the confidentiality of communications across the Internet, cellular networks, payment systems, and more.

The selection of HQC marks SandboxAQ’s second major contribution to NIST’s post-quantum standardization effort, a key step in ensuring the protection of the world’s most critical data. This landmark decision represents a significant milestone in the global transition to a robust, quantum-safe encryption future and further solidifies SandboxAQ at the forefront of cryptographic innovation.

HQC is a key encapsulation mechanism designed to secure the exchange of encryption keys in a quantum-resistant manner. Unlike traditional public-key encryption systems such as the widely-used public key cryptosystem, RSA, and elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC), which quantum computers render obsolete, HQC is built on the well-established mathematical foundation of error-correcting codes, which is not vulnerable to quantum attacks. It provides strong security guarantees while balancing performance factors such as computational efficiency and key size, which are primary considerations for large-scale real-world deployments. In NIST’s final selection report, the HQC algorithm, co-invented by SandboxAQ team members, stood out as a robust and reliable candidate for wide-scale adoption across industries, following multiple rounds of global cryptanalysis and peer review.

Prior to HQC, the SandboxAQ team also played a significant role in the development of SPHINCS+, one of the initial algorithms already selected by NIST as part of its initial set of PQC standards in 2022. With HQC now formally accepted into the standardization process, SandboxAQ has contributed to two of the five critical PQC standards for key exchanges and signatures, demonstrating deep and sustained leadership in quantum-resistant cybersecurity and ushering in a safer digital world.

SandboxAQ has a unique position to improve cryptographic postures and ensure better compliance, fewer outages, and robust cybersecurity. It produces world-class cryptographic research, internationally recognized standards, and widely adopted cryptographic innovations. Leveraging this world-leading expertise, SandboxAQ also offers an industry-leading cryptography management product, uniquely positioning it within the global cryptographic landscape. Our flagship cryptographic offering, AQtive Guard, is trained on billions of cryptographic findings meticulously structured and enriched with supplemental data by our world-class cryptography team. By cross-referencing and augmenting our customers’ inventories, we empower efficient exploration and actionable insights. Leveraging our distinctive AI approach, seamless third-party integrations, and comprehensive 360-degree coverage sensors, AQtive Guard delivers unparalleled visibility and effectiveness for the protection of enterprises and governments.

SandboxAQ has joined the United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC) as a founding member of its new AI Hub. The purpose of the AI Hub is to be the primary AI solutions provider and resource center for more than 100 UN entities and other international organizations around the globe. 

SanboxAQ has a post on this which you can read here.

SandboxAQ announced today a partnership with Google Cloud to integrate and optimize its platform of Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) on Google Cloud while enabling seamless procurement and deployment of SandboxAQ’s solution through Google Cloud Marketplace. SandboxAQ’s cutting-edge quantitative AI technologies, which are driving innovation in drug discovery, chemical and materials science, advanced sensing, and cybersecurity across diverse industries and applications, will leverage Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider.

‍SandboxAQ is a B2B company delivering solutions at the intersection of AI and quantum techniques. The company’s Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) deliver critical advances in life sciences, financial services, navigation, and other sectors. The company emerged from Alphabet Inc. as an independent, growth-backed company funded by leading investors including funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., IQT, US Innovative Technology Fund, S32, Hillspire Capital, Breyer Capital, Marc Benioff, Thomas Tull, Paladin Capital Group, and others. For more information, visit http://www.sandboxaq.com.