At the Quside Showcase Day 2025 – The Entropy Nexus, three leading experts took the stage to discuss how the foundations of digital trust must evolve in the face of rapid technological change — from silicon-level protection to post-quantum readiness and confidential computing.
Moderated by José R. Martínez, VP of Innovation at Quside, the panel brought together Pim Tuyls, Executive Director of Security IP at Synopsys; Eric Sivertson, President and Founder of Quantum Trace; and Francisco López, Director of Cloud Systems Solution Engineering at Oracle.
“Cybersecurity is like the engine of a ship,” Martínez said as he opened the session. “You may not see it, but without it, you’ll never reach your destination.”
Trust Begins in the Silicon
Pim Tuyls began the discussion by reflecting on the true origins of digital trust, the hardware itself.
“Hiding a cryptographic key on a chip is far from trivial,” Tuyls explained. “If a key comes from outside the chip, someone else knows it. That’s not trust — that’s risk.”
He described how Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) act as a kind of biometric for the chip, generating unique cryptographic keys internally and securely.
“The chip should be the only entity with its own key,” he emphasized. “If you wouldn’t hide your house key under the doormat, don’t do it with your cryptographic ones.”
Tuyls also stressed that security must be simple and practical. Overly complex systems, he warned, often lead to misconfigurations and vulnerabilities: “Security should make things safer, not harder.”
Resilience Over Fragility
Eric Sivertson, drawing on his experience in the defense and semiconductor sectors, focused on the importance of resilience and adaptability in modern cryptographic systems.
“You can have the best algorithms in the world,” he said, “but if the silicon beneath them can be compromised through side-channel or fault-injection attacks, you can’t call that system trustworthy.”
Sivertson urged companies to embrace crypto-agility — the ability to update and replace algorithms securely as new threats or standards emerge.
“Don’t build fragile systems,” he warned. “You must be able to upgrade cryptography without rebuilding the entire infrastructure.”
He also predicted that confidential computing, where encrypted data can be processed without being decrypted, will become a cornerstone of future digital security.
“By 2028, confidential computing will be a $50 billion market,” Sivertson noted. “And none of it will work without high-quality randomness and post-quantum cryptographic keys — that’s where quantum entropy becomes critical.”
The Cost and Complexity of Change
Bringing in a business and customer-oriented perspective, Francisco López from Oracle addressed the economic and cultural barriers to adopting new cryptographic technologies.
“We offer encryption and compression for free,” he said. “Yet some customers still refuse because it affects performance. The biggest blocker isn’t cost — it’s mindset.”
López highlighted that regulations like DORA and NIS2 are raising awareness, but many organizations still treat 2030 or 2035 as faraway deadlines, delaying investment in quantum-safe systems.
“Some companies think they can leap straight from classical to post-quantum algorithms,” he said. “That’s a mistake. Transitioning will require hybrid phases, careful planning, and collaboration.”
Hardware, Agility, and the Future of Trust
The panelists agreed that trust must be built from the ground up, beginning with secure hardware and extending through cryptographic layers to the cloud. Tuyls explained that post-quantum algorithms, being more mathematically complex, will demand hardware acceleration to achieve efficiency and scalability.
“Running these algorithms purely in software will be too slow and energy-hungry,” he said. “We need co-design — secure hardware that complements cryptographic software.”
Sivertson added that programmable hardware, such as FPGAs, will play a key role: “They allow us to update algorithms securely and efficiently, essential for defense, space, and industrial systems that must operate for decades.”
The Quantum-Secure Path Forward
As the session concluded, Martínez summarized the discussion around a shared message: trust is evolving and must evolve faster.
“We’re entering a new era where security can’t rely solely on software patches,” he said. “It must be built into the hardware, verified through entropy, and ready for the quantum future.”
Tuyls closed with a powerful reflection:
“Chip security is mission critical to the trust of the connected world. Strong randomness, post-quantum algorithms, and agility are key to that.”
Sivertson agreed, adding:
“We’re living in a time of magic. Quantum technologies are redefining what’s possible and how we define trust itself.”
The takeaway was clear: the future of trust will depend on collaboration, hardware innovation, and verified entropy, the foundation for a truly quantum-secure digital world.
