SAN DIEGO, June 12, 2025 -- Today at Cisco Live, Cisco’s annual IT and communications conference, Quantum Xchange announced that its Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) key management solution, Phio TX, is now available as a virtual container. The new form factor, Phio TX-EM, is compatible with Cisco networking operating systems IOS XE, IOS XR, as well as the Nexus NX-OS operating system, which will allow Cisco networking users to harden their infrastructure and easily migrate to NIST-standard PQC with no network downtime or performance degradation.

Phio TX supports standard key management protocols, such as SKIP and ETSI, enabling drop-in integration without changes to existing router configurations. It is also one of the first products to receive NIST certification for the latest FIPS 140-3 cryptographic module standard and FIPS 203 validation supporting all ML-KEM algorithms for post-quantum security.

Compatible with Cisco IOS XE and XR routers supporting containers such as Cisco Catalyst 8000v, NCS 540 and Nexus switches with containers, Phio TX-EM provides over-the-network provisioning, installation, configuration and distribution of Phio TX key management as an integrated process within the network itself.

With Phio TX-EM, SKIP key requests are kept within the cryptographic boundary of the device, making the SKIP PQC implementation secure by eliminating the possibility of data leakage due to weakly configured external SKIP calls. Only FIPS-validated PQC key exchanges are passed between devices. Moreover, Phio TX does not rely on pre-shared or static keys. It uses ephemeral keys, dynamically generated in-memory and deleted after use. A strong symmetric key is created and travels out-of-band, independent of the encrypted data thereby avoiding harvest now, decrypt later (HNDL) and man-in-the-middle attack scenarios.

“Our support for Cisco’s SKIP protocol and network operating systems is just the latest example of how Quantum Xchange is working to offer their customers, and the market, a practical path to quantum readiness while hardening their infrastructure today,” said Antonio Sanchez, Chief Strategy Officer at Quantum Xchange. “Phio TX’s crypto-agile features and capabilities deployed as a virtual container, offers customers choice and flexibility for meeting the unique data security requirements of their organization while easily upgrading their network infrastructure to quantum safety with zero static keys, zero downtime, and zero added latency.”

Quantum Xchange demoed Phio TX and its various deployment options in the Security & Networking Village at Cisco Live, where the best and brightest minds in IT come together to learn, share knowledge, and connect.