Quantum ICT Collaboration Center was established within NICT in April 2021, aiming to accelerate delivering new information security rooted in quantum technologies to society. The Japanese government has designated the center as the Quantum Security Hub, one of Japan's Quantum Technology Innovation Hubs.

In the conventional information technology framework, information is embodied by symbols 0 and 1. Electric and optical pulses implement the symbols. Since being established in the middle of the 20th century, the framework has been dominant.

At the same time, the ultimate physical law of quantum mechanics has stimulated us to renovate the conventional framework. Furthermore, we are convinced that information technology has entered a new paradigm, 'quantum information technology.' The establishment of the Quantum Technology Innovation Hubs reflects the emergence of the new paradigm. In quantum information technology, a superposition of states 0 and 1 embodies information. We call the superposition state a quantum bit or a qubit.

A quantum computer has become a threat to the modern cryptographic system. A quantum computer exploits quantum mechanical phenomena and uses a qubit as the basic unit of information. Research in the mid-1990s showing that a quantum computer could crack modern cryptographic systems shocked society instantly. Today, small-scale quantum computers working with cloud services have become available.

A quantum computer will not crack quantum cryptography. While modern cryptography faces potential threats from quantum computers, quantum cryptography provides unbreakable security even against unbounded computer resources. Researchers have already put quantum cryptography into practice. In multiple countries, they have started constructing infrastructure using it.

In the future, we intend to base information and communication systems on quantum mechanics. New applications and services are becoming available by integrating quantum computing and cryptography with conventional technologies.

Quantum ICT collaboration center is involved in creating an open collaboration environment, aiming to accelerate research and development for social implementation, standardization and human resources development. We wish to work with people in various fields and industries to create a new cross-disciplinary area, the "Quantum security field".

In 2010, we built a quantum cryptographic network (Tokyo QKD Network) in the metropolitan area and realized the world's first demonstration of completely secret transmission video conferencing. The technologies developed in the Tokyo QKD Network have now been adopted as the international standards one after another since 2019.

For social implementation of quantum communication and cryptography, it is essential to properly integrate them with other relevant but non-quantum technologies such as modern cryptographic technology, coding technology, network technology, and satellite communication technology. For that purpose, it is necessary to learn these relevant technologies, and often to update these technologies by ourselves for merging them with quantum communication and cryptography, which ate time consuming and involved tasks. At first glance, these tasks seem more practical and technical issues, far away from basic research, but on the contrary, require genuine integration of different fields. Through such efforts, we can get a clue to discover the very universal principles of information and communications technologies.

Right now, at our center, daily held are meetings and seminars on various themes ranging from basic research to applied research and social implementation with the cooperation of related labs within NICT. Participants’ spectrum ranges from research and business departments of industry-academia-government organizations, intellectual property and standardization divisions, and administrative offices. The forefront of R&D and business of quantum technology is full of dynamism that changes the technology and business landscape on a weekly basis.

We hope to share an exciting time with you and work together.