Orange warns of quantum security risks as it expands B2B push in Romania

Orange Romania held its Business Tech Now conference in downtown Bucharest on Thursday, October 1, to mark its increased focus on B2B solutions in cybersecurity, AI, and quantum-safe infrastructure.

The event took place in the historic Palace of the Telephones and reunited Orange top management, representatives of national institutions, and business leaders. With small drones cruising overhead, Orange representatives outlined the company's B2B offering.

Julien Ducarroz, CEO of Orange Romania, opened the conference by highlighting the company’s growth from connectivity to B2B solutions.

“We go far beyond connectivity, and even there we have to talk about resilience and cybersecurity,” he said.

Florin Popa, Orange business director, continued the opening address.

“Orange invested massively locally as well as at group level, to develop new, innovative services, especially in cybersecurity and cloud,” he said.

He also presented Orange Cyberdefense as a Europe-born large player in the sector.

“Maybe you don’t normally see Orange as a key player in cloud and compute, but we operate the largest data center network in Romania, the largest such network operated by a single entity,” he said.

During the subsequent sessions, department heads within Orange talked about company initiatives regarding cybersecurity, data, and quantum tech.

“Previously, fear sold cybersecurity. This is real, but incomplete. Security should not slow business, but give it confidence to move faster,” said Madalin Dumitru, CEO of SCUT, Orange’s cybersecurity firm in Romania.

Vivien Mura, Global CTO of Orange Cyberdefense, doubled down on the interconnection between AI and cybersecurity.

“What we have today is an explosion in the number of vulnerabilities, and that is the big problem for us. We also have a collapsing time to exploit vulnerabilities. It now takes only a few hours for a bad actor to exploit a vulnerability. AI is perhaps the most important ingredient in this new reality,” Mura said.

Frank De Jong, Program Director for Quantum Safe Networks and Edge Computing at Orange Business, delved into the company's quantum push. Orange is currently exploring quantum applications, including the optimization of new mobile networks, while also preparing for the security risks posed by quantum-powered decryption.

According to De Jong, 50% of experts expect a quantum computer to be able to break RSA-2048, a widely used asymmetric encryption standard, within 15 years, although the bigger concern is when data collected today could be decrypted in the future.