Quantum Key Distribution Network and Quantum Secure Cloud Technologies for Genome Medicine Use Cases

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a technology for distributing cryptographic keys between two communication parties based on the quantum physics for the secure communication. A trusted nodebased key relay technique is integrated with QKD to overcome the technical limitations of QKD and to enable key distribution between two arbitrary communication parties in the trusted node network, which we refer to as the QKD network. In addition, secret sharing technology has been integrated with the QKD network to realize secure data storage and secure data communication, which we call a quantum secure cloud. This paper presents the development and evaluation of the proof-of-concept (PoC) system for the QKD network and quantum secure cloud, specially applied to the genome medicine domain. The PoC system was developed at Tohoku University and Toshiba sites to address the “cancer clinical sequencing” use-case. We evaluated three practical scenarios with the PoC system: (1) real-time transmission of genome analysis data, (2) “expert panel”, an online video conference for medical experts' discussion, and (3) distributed backup of genome analysis data. To support these scenarios, we developed three new functions: (1) a function for monitoring output data and pipeline processing of data encryption/decryption and transmission for secure large-scale data transfer, (2) a key management system function to achieve both large-scale data transmission and low-latency data communication, and (3) a function for preemptive key data reading and direct access to storage devices to enable high-speed data transmission and distributed data backup using a secret sharing scheme. These scenarios and functions were evaluated and demonstrated using real or simulated genome data. The evaluation results reveal that QKD network and quantum secure cloud technologies can be applied to cancer clinical sequencing as a use-case of the genome medicine domain.