Skudo has been selected for SEQULITE, an EDF 2025 project focused on lightweight secure communications with hardware-backed post-quantum security for defence and space applications. The result marks Skudo’s third European Defence Fund selection across three consecutive work programmes, following HSM4COM under EDF 2023 and SIGMA under EDF 2024.
Secure communications must serve platforms with very different operational constraints, from equipment in the field to systems operating in space. For these applications, protecting information is part of the communication system’s design. SEQULITE brings this challenge together with the need to prepare for changing cryptographic requirements over the lifetime of the equipment.
The project’s emphasis on lightweight communications reflects the practical needs of embedded platforms. Security has to fit the system it protects, including applications where size, weight and power are limited. Hardware-backed post-quantum security adds a further dimension: helping communications evolve as future threats and security requirements change.
Skudo contributes its hardware-security and FPGA expertise to this European collaboration. The company develops cryptographic functions in reconfigurable hardware, alongside secure communication systems and reusable IP. This experience connects the project’s secure-communications aims with the engineering needs of defence and space platforms.
Working with European partners, Skudo will bring that perspective to the development of SEQULITE. The collaboration builds on the company’s broader work in European defence programmes and its continuing ESA activities in space cybersecurity, hardware-rooted cryptography and secure embedded systems.
HSM4COM, SIGMA and SEQULITE span complementary areas of secure hardware, resilient positioning and future secure communications. Together, these selections strengthen Skudo’s position in European secure-communications development and provide a continuing context for collaboration across the defence and space sectors.