The National Cyber Security Center of the Kingdom of Bahrain and SandboxAQ have announced a partnership aimed at establishing a nationwide cybersecurity modernisation framework. According to SandboxAQ, this marks one of the world’s first large-scale commitments to transitioning towards a quantum-safe economy.
SandboxAQ, which focuses on AI-driven cybersecurity and cryptographic management, will support Bahrain in securing sovereign data, critical infrastructure and sensitive government and private-sector systems against cyber, cryptographic, and quantum computing threats. To that end, the company will deploy its SandboxAQ’s AQtive Guard platform to over 60 distinct ministry environments across the Kingdom.
The announcement comes as governments worldwide prepare for “Q-Day”, the point when cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) will be capable of breaking today’s widely used encryption. While experts now estimate CRQCs to be feasible by as early as 2029, the threat is already present through “harvest-now, decrypt-later” attacks, where adversaries steal encrypted data today with plans to decrypt it once quantum capabilities mature. For governments, this includes classified communications, diplomatic cables, defence data, national identity records and decades of sensitive archives.
