IMDEA Software at the 20th Anniversary Workshop of the CWI Cryptology Group
IMDEA Software at the 20th Anniversary Workshop of the CWI Cryptology Group
On 15 September 2025, Ignacio Cascudo from the IMDEA Software Institute participated as an invited speaker at the Workshop for the 20th Anniversary of the CWI Cryptology Group in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The event brought together leading researchers and practitioners to discuss two decades of progress in cryptology and explore new directions for secure computation, communication, and privacy technologies.
Ignacio’s invited talk presented research carried out within Work Package 2 – Confidential Toolkit, which is developing a set of privacy-preserving technologies and post-quantum cryptographic mechanisms for secure computation and communication in 6G networks. The work focuses on defining cryptographic enablers for privacy-preserving and confidential computation, along with an in-depth study of their feasibility, practicality, and hardware/software requirements.
In his presentation, Ignacio discussed advances in verifiable and privacy-preserving computation, highlighting techniques that enable data to remain confidential while still allowing useful operations to be performed securely. The talk addressed both theoretical aspects of cryptographic protocol design and their practical implications for future 6G systems, where large-scale distributed infrastructures and edge environments require strong guarantees of confidentiality and trust.
The Confidential Toolkit also explores how these mechanisms can be applied in real industrial contexts, particularly in the Enterprise and Utilities sectors and Industrial Control Systems (ICS). By testing and adapting cryptographic primitives to these environments, the toolkit aims to demonstrate the practicality of privacy-preserving computation in scenarios that demand resilience, low latency, and operational security.
The CWI anniversary workshop provided a rich environment for scientific exchange, connecting researchers from foundational cryptography with those applying advanced techniques in emerging communication systems. The discussions reinforced the importance of collaboration between academia and industry in shaping the security foundations of next-generation networks.
For more information about the event, visit the official workshop page.