Podcast with Walter Raquet, Chairman and CEO of Symmatrics

Yuval Boger speaks with Walter Raquet, Chairman and CEO of Symmatrics, a company that has revived the one-time pad symmetric key encryption concept — once used exclusively by US intelligence agencies — and brought it to the internet age using quantum random number generators. Walter explained how their system eliminates passwords and reusable credentials by wrapping every transaction in unique keys that are used once and destroyed, making it fundamentally different from today’s math-based asymmetric encryption that quantum computers threaten to break. They discussed Symmatrics key distribution center, their hardware-based “quantum protected network,” their patent portfolio covering one-time pad symmetric key use, and their ongoing work with NIST to achieve certification ahead of the government’s 2027 quantum-resistance deadline. The one-time pad has long been regarded as perfectly secure, but Walter says intelligence agencies dropped it in the early 2000s because couriers had to carry matching key material to each party. Symmatrics is trying to remove that bottleneck by generating keys with quantum random number generators and delivering them electronically. Walter describes a key distribution center that can create trillions of true random numbers, store billions and distribute roughly eight million per second. He says three QRNGs costing $6,000 to $8,000…