In this episode of Allies in Innovation, host Mikkel Svold sits down once again with
Samant Khajuria, Vice President of Quantum and Cyber at Terma. They revisit the evolving cyber landscape, explore how defense organizations are preparing for “Q-Day” (when quantum computers can break today’s encryption), and discuss the crucial role of collaboration in staying ahead.
They also cover practical challenges, from legacy systems to shifting standards, and explain why cyber needs to be integrated from the very first design stage and not added later.
If you want to understand how the defense industry is gearing up for disruptive technologies, this episode will give you a front-row seat.
In this episode, you'll learn about:
1. Why cyber is moving from “add-on” to a core design requirement.
2. How NATO standards are shaping interoperability across defense systems.
3. The convergence of cyber, AI, and quantum - and the risks of misuse.
4. The looming quantum threat: “harvest now, decrypt later.”
5. How post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution could secure the future.
6. Real-world challenges in transitioning legacy systems.
7. The importance of partnerships and joint strategies in Europe and beyond.
8. Why quantum sensing might become a game-changer in the next five years
Episode Content
00:00 Introduction to Cyber and Quantum with Samant Khajuria
01:54 Cybersecurity as a fundamental requirement in defense and infrastructure
03:29 The shift from “add-on” security to built-in resilience
05:41 Disruptive technologies: cyber, AI, quantum, and their dual-use risks
08:58 Collaboration and partnerships to keep pace with rapid innovation
09:38 Preparing for Q-Day: harvest now, decrypt later
10:52 Post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution in practice
12:47 Challenges of legacy systems and new cyber standards
15:09 Roadmap: proof-of-concepts and quantum key exchange projects
16:42 How smaller organizations can prepare for cyber and quantum threats
18:06 Quantum sensing and other non-cyber applications of quantum tech
19:40 Looking ahead: strategy, digitization, and reducing red tape
Production
This podcast is brought to you by Terma.
This podcast is produced by Montanus.
Episode Transcript
Mikkel Svold (00:12):
Hello and welcome to Allies and Innovation. Today we are talking about cyber and we are talking about quantum. We've done it before, but we're going to revisit it just a little bit to see where has things been going and where are they going right now. Together with me in the studio I have once again, Samant Khajuria. Welcome to you.
Samant Khajuria (00:33):
Thank you.
Mikkel Svold (00:33):
And you are, correct me if I'm wrong, the vice president of Quantum and Cyber here at the Terma.
Samant Khajuria (00:37):
Yes.
Mikkel Svold (00:38):
So I think you're the right person to talk to about this what's happening. Myself, I'm Mikkel Svold and I'll be your host. And I think we should just get right into it, Samant, because we've actually visited cyber security a few times in this podcast. The first time was in 2022 where we talk military cyber with a bunch of people from Lockheed Martin, which was really exciting. And then we talked also in February this year about digital warfare, cyber and quantum. So to you, the listeners out there, if you haven't heard those, I recommend you go back and revisit those or visit those before you actually continue this episode because this will be some kind of a build on on that. I think, Samant, looking back at the past, well, nearly a year, I know that things don't necessarily move very fast, but again, they do move some kind of fast, at least we see a lot of AI development and I'm figuring that that push for progress is something that you see across the board when we talk cyber. What's happened since we talk last time, if anything?
Samant Khajuria (01:54):
Yeah. Thank you, Mikkel, for the question. I think lots have happened and probably that's why we are very busy. Today whatever we are talking in terms of defense or as a matter of fact, in critical infrastructure, we are seeing cyber as a fundamental thing that has been asked by our customers to whom we are providing the products and services. What does that mean? Whether it is making sure any threats towards defense and critical infrastructure, how can we mitigate those threats by applying state-of-the-art cyber solutions on that. In addition to that, we also see quite a lot in getting the systems certified from a cyber perspective. So Denmark has also started to use NATO standards that we are looking into that whatever Denmark is acquiring, how the NATO standards are applied. And the reason for that is also from the perspective of interoperability. So when we are talking today's systems, it's not standalone systems, it's systems of systems. So systems need to talk to each other from different countries. By applying same standards, it's become a lot more easier from an interoperability perspective to share the information that flows.
Mikkel Svold (03:29):
Do you see a general shift in the attitude towards cyber? I remember that we talked about seeing cyber mostly as an add-on to the actual function you want to have. Do you see a shift happening right now because we see a global shift in the threats, we see geopolitics are shifting all the time?
Samant Khajuria (03:53):
Yeah. And in the start of the podcast, you mentioned the first podcast we had with Lockheed Martin, and I think at that time this is exactly what we discussed because that was a time where cyber was always seen as an add-on thing. So something to be implemented on top after the system has been done. But today, cyber is something that comes very much in the start. Whenever we have drawings of the architecture on the table is when we start talking about cyber and cyber requirements. And it's also to understand that cyber is not something that you come in do and go out, but it also something that supports the life cycle of the product or service that has been provided. So once the system has left us and lives in our customer's environment, how do we still make sure that it is cyber resilient? So there is quite a lot of shift that we see.
Mikkel Svold (04:52):
And what are we shifting towards? Now if we zoom out a little bit, we've got AI rocketing out there, we've got quantum peeking around the corner. We don't really know when things are happening, but we are getting ready. We have other layered defense. We've got different kinds of infrastructure that needs new sorts of protection. Where are the major things that companies in the defense sector, but also in critical infrastructure, and I'm guessing also in larger corporations because they typically take part in some kind of critical infrastructure. What should they be looking out for right now you think?
Samant Khajuria (05:41):
From cyber perspective I think everyone needs to be aware of what is the state of the art of the technologies that we are talking ?the technologies that you mentioned, cyber, quantum, AI and bunch of others, these are emerging destructive technologies. These technologies are developed or mature at a very fast pace as compared to what was anticipated. So today AI has become part of our everyday life. Whether we talk about using of LLM models for ChatGPT and all these, but also simple work, everyday work in our companies are at home where we use AI. How AI works, it's being trained on data. So is it trained on the right data? This is where this cyber AI gets intertwined in that sense. So cyber makes sure the integrity of this data, that the models are being trained, that we are going to more or less agree with whatever the output of the AI model would be is the right one. So that's where understanding the technology, how the technology can help the large organizations defense, critical infrastructure, but also understand the threats of these technologies.
(07:13):
So for example, if AI being used in a wrong way, then it could be quite a big threat towards the organizations. If quantum computing is used to break the algorithms that today secure us, it is the threat to us. If quantum is being used by non-friendly nations to harm us is also a threat that we need to look into. And same thing goes for cyber. For many years we have talked about cyber as in defensive thing to protect and safeguard, but we also see today cyber as an offensive thing. So what we see, the attacks that we see on critical infrastructures and so on is one of those examples. So weighing the threats and the benefits of these emerging disruptive technologies.
Mikkel Svold (08:07):
Where would you put your focus? Where do you put your focus? You had a really large-
Samant Khajuria (08:13):
Yeah. It's very difficult to follow the pace because all these technologies are developing quite rapidly all across the globe by many different entities for many different interests. How do we cope up with this or best cope up with this is also through collaboration and partnerships. So having partners all across Europe, all across nations that we work with or we would like to work with, share information, share intelligence, learn from each other, and that helps us be at the level where we would like to be.
Mikkel Svold (08:58):
Now I want to dive in a little bit to the quantum threats that we see, specifically the threats that you can use quantum computing to break current encryptions. How would you prepare because you're not actually able to do it yet, but right now there's an offensive strategy, harvest now decrypt later. We talked about that also in the last episode I remember. But how would you prepare now to be ready for when that quantum day happens for Q day?
Samant Khajuria (09:38):
Yeah. Q day. That's a good one. Harvest now and decrypt later is not something that is new. This has always been there. It's a cat and mouse. When we had age-old encryption solutions like DES, data encryption standard, when DES was broken, it came as triple DES. So then you don't encrypt one time, you encrypt three times. At the same time, there was a work going on to build an advanced encryption standard, which has been a standard for most of the encryption globally, from finance to public sector to defense for many years. And during this period, harvest nor decrypt later has always stayed. Now comes the new wave of it where we see today's encryption solutions are what we have might be under threat for quantum computers being able to break it. What has happened? So quantum computing has gone from theoretical state to a practical state.
(10:52):
So we are seeing a lot more maturity in quantum computing today, what we anticipated five years ago. So this means that we might see something coming faster than what we thought. That's one of the things. How can we best prepare? Start looking into post-quantum cryptography or quantum key distribution solutions, what today we are already using in a commercial world. We know that quantum key distribution or post-quantum cryptography in some way or form is being utilized. One of the example is, as we talked, Google Chrome browser uses that today. And when we are building our security solutions, we should take the approach where we have a modular approach so we can change our systems that secure us today with quantum enabled solutions. What Terma is doing in this, we are working closely with the research organizations. We are working closely with universities. We are also partnering at the European level with other companies looking into these solutions. How would it look like in the future and how do we best prepare for this?
Mikkel Svold (12:25):
And now you've already been working on this for a couple of years, and what do you think has been the biggest challenges so far in implementing and shifting, not just the mindset, but also in all practicality, the technology, the software, what challenges have been the biggest in the transition?
Samant Khajuria (12:47):
There are magnitude of challenges because these are legacy systems, so we cannot simply replace things today. So what is out there today is something that need to be closely looked into. And we know that we cannot simply change all the legacy systems. So how can we best make the work around together what we have today and use these state-of-the-art technologies to secure them? Hardware wise, software wise, we have challenges on all the fronts that we are looking into. But also one thing that we should also think about competence wise. So the skill sets that are needed in order to do this is something what we see from the coming workforce coming skill sets that we see in Denmark we are working on. Yeah.
Mikkel Svold (13:41):
Do you have any examples of any of the challenges, concrete things? Have you stumbled into trying to implement a new encryption method and then suddenly something didn't work and you had to go back and forth?
Samant Khajuria (13:59):
Yeah. It gets into bits and bytes by the end of the day. So by simply one-to-one replacement of something is not the way of working. That's why we move towards the standards. So what we see is from the internet world, we use SSL, we have certificates and so on. Those are the standards that can be implemented. So updating and upgrading through those standards become a lot more easier. But with quantum key distribution or post quantum crypto, we also have to see that how it can be replacing the classical ones or working alongside classical ones. So one of the big challenges or one of the big things has been how can the quantum enabled solutions and the classical solutions can co-exist?
Mikkel Svold (15:01):
And looking into that future, what is your roadmap right now? Yeah. What's your roadmap?
Samant Khajuria (15:09):
Yeah. Of course many things changes quite fast because of the maturity of the technology. What is happening around our roadmap is to build proof of concepts. Basically being practical at looking at the technology and how can be applied to our own products and services. How do we do that? We basically doing collaboration. We are funding some of the projects at the universities in Denmark and so on, having these quantum boxes to do quantum key exchange and so on. Today, the form factor of these boxes are big. So these are something for more data center-ish level so we also see how the form factor changes of these kind of things so this can be applied more widely today. Today, that's not something that is available, but we can see that in the coming three years, four years, that we will have that.
Mikkel Svold (16:19):
If you're in a company that didn't have as many resources to push towards cyber, but you still sit with critical infrastructure or you sit with some form of critical component in the nation, how would you go about it? What would you do?
Samant Khajuria (16:42):
Come to us. Ask for help. Yeah. No. But that's there. So Terma has definitely developed as a national integrator in Denmark. We have also have developed an ecosystem where we can help the companies and the organizations that are in defense and critical infrastructure. How can they go by these things? And we have quite a lot of experience in this field and something that we can provide that experience to others.
Mikkel Svold (17:17):
I was wondering one thing, because one thing is preparing for all this and what you should do, what should be your next move in this preparation? And of course, as you mentioned, collaborative efforts is really the way to go because otherwise you'll just sit in your little own four-walled office and then you won't really know what's going on. But I also can't but think, how realistic is it that we will see a large-scale quantum threat coming within the next 10 years? Is it one of those technologies that is always 10 years ahead, or do you really think that we do need to make sure that we are ready?
Samant Khajuria (18:06):
So far things have moved faster than what we thought things would be. If we follow the same trajectory so 10 years is quite-
Mikkel Svold (18:18):
It's quite long.
Samant Khajuria (18:19):
Quite long. Exactly. And we don't know what will happen in next two to five years, how the technology will mature. But there are also many different things as we talked. Like in quantum, we are also investigating on a quantum sensing. Sensing is one of the parts where for better situational awareness, where quantum sensors can be used, gravitometers, magnetometers and so on and so forth. The technology readiness level of these capabilities is quite high. So we can see something coming in less than five years or some already exist at the level that I would not say completely commercially, but not very far from that.
Mikkel Svold (19:11):
And quantum sensing is basically nothing to do with quantum cyber threats.
Samant Khajuria (19:17):
No. No. No.
Mikkel Svold (19:17):
But it's a whole-
Samant Khajuria (19:19):
A whole lot of different thing.
Mikkel Svold (19:20):
But it's just another application of quantum technology.
Samant Khajuria (19:24):
Yes.
Mikkel Svold (19:24):
Yes. If we meet again, if we talk again a year from now, what progress would you expect that the defense industry has made?
Samant Khajuria (19:40):
From defense industry it's very important to have a clear strategy on some of these emerging disruptive technologies. It's also very, very important ... And I know that defense is doing today, quite lots of these things. Especially in Denmark we know that the defense is looking into a large digitization initiatives, what they're doing. But a clear strategy, a clear collaboration with industry and the partners that can provide those capabilities will help a lot. And we are in a different place where we were five years ago. So by the end of the day, I would say removing the red tape.
Mikkel Svold (20:31):
Yeah. Okay. I think that's a good closing remark. It's always nice to get things ... Being able to do things a little bit more smoothly and-
Samant Khajuria (20:41):
Jointly.
Mikkel Svold (20:41):
And swiftly. Yeah. Jointly. Yes. Exactly. Samant Khajuria, thank you so much for participating. And to you out there listening, I hope you enjoyed this a little bit shorter episode, but I hope you got something out of it. And if you're not already looking into cyber security and quantum security and all within that domain, as Samant said, reach out to us at Terma and we can always have the talk. Oh yeah, I want to say if you have any questions, anything you want us to talk about on the podcast, do reach out to us on [podcast@terma.com](mailto:podcast@terma.com). And that was [podcast@terma.com](mailto:podcast@terma.com) and we'll be happy to hear from you and see what we can do, see what we can talk about. And I think with that, all I have left to say is thank you so much for listening.