It has been a turbulent and costly year for a handful of major brands, with high-profile cyberattacks targeting household names such as Jaguar Land Rover, M&S, and Co-op.
Businesses might be racing to stay one step ahead of cyber attacks, but an increasing number of company data breaches and hacks continue to hit the headlines. And the next technological leap could make it even easier for those hackers to get their hands on your data and sensitive information.
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So what happens when quantum computing arrives? In simple terms, quantum computers could solve in seconds the kinds of problems that would take conventional machines years to process.
The impact could be revolutionary, transforming sectors from healthcare to finance. But in the wrong hands, it could prove to be catastrophic and a major headache for businesses everywhere.
According to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), quantum computing could one day break the encryption systems currently protecting sensitive data across vital industries, including banking, communications, and critical national infrastructure.
The agency issued fresh guidance, urging businesses to adopt “post-quantum cryptography” (PQC) — a new type of encryption designed to withstand quantum attacks — and warned that they may have just a decade to prepare.
That sense of urgency is what drives Sheffield-based cybersecurity start-up Sitehop, founded in 2022 by Melissa Chambers and Ben Harper with a simple mission: to future-proof digital networks and help businesses prepare for a quantum-powered world.
“When we started Sitehop, the general view was that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer was 25 to 30 years away,” Melissa Chambers, CEO and co-founder of Sitehop, tells Prolific North.
“But the latest research now suggests it could be as soon as seven years. Some experts even think it might be sooner.”
“That’s a significant acceleration,” she adds. “There’s always the possibility that someone already has one and isn’t disclosing it.”
Solving today’s problems with tomorrow in mind
Sitehop’s technology tackles a fundamental cybersecurity flaw that encryption isn’t always used everywhere it should be.
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“We see three main issues: performance isn’t good enough with existing solutions; the total cost of ownership is too high; and latency is a major challenge,” explains Ben Harper, CTO and co-founder of Sitehop. “On top of that, there’s the future risk from quantum computers.”
The lightbulb moment behind the business came when Harper, working on government projects during the first Covid lockdown, built a prototype that made encryption run faster by embedding it in hardware rather than software. Chambers, who previously spent years in telecoms, immediately saw the potential.
“One of the pillars of 5G is ultra-low latency, but encryption is often disabled because it slows networks down,” she says. “That’s the dirty little secret: we don’t always turn on encryption everywhere, and we really should. Performance takes priority over security.”
That insight became the foundation for Sitehop.
“Our very first customer — a global tier-one telco — did a proof of concept before we’d even released the product,” explains Chambers. “They told us they’d been searching for a solution like this for five years.”
Sitehop’s hardware-based system encrypts data at chip level, rather than in software, which the duo claims makes it faster, more secure and efficient.
“Current asymmetric cryptography relies on problems that are hard for classical computers to solve,” Harper explains. “But quantum computers work differently and can break those systems much more easily.”
That’s why, he says, governments and research bodies worldwide are racing to develop new quantum-resistant encryption standards.
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“New, secure algorithms are being developed globally, led by the American National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with the input from 25 countries. It’s a world effort to create these new standards that are hard for a quantum computer to crack.”
But Sitehop’s technology goes one step further.
“NIST will likely release new algorithms in the future as quantum computing evolves, so the ability to update and adapt encryption in the future is going to be crucial. We’ve built that updatability into our product — and that’s really at the heart of our story.”
‘Bad actors are collecting data now’
While Sitehop’s first market was telecoms, the company’s technology can now be used wherever secure connectivity is critical, from data centres and banks to national infrastructure.
But Chambers has a stark warning: the threat isn’t just about the future, it’s happening already behind the scenes.
“Think of the ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ threat,” she explains. “Bad actors and nefarious states are collecting data now, even if it’s encrypted they are storing it, and as soon as they have access to a quantum computer, they will be able to decrypt it all.”
That’s why industries like the finance sector, which are heavily regulated, are already moving fast to tackle the future risks.
“If you think about financial markets and how they must hold data for at least seven years, imagine what would happen if those bad actors had access to that? Banks are now pushing their connectivity providers — the telcos and hyperscalers — to adopt post-quantum encryption standards sooner than the rest.”
It might be front of mind for many large enterprises but Harper adds that the issues Sitehop tackles go far beyond quantum computing.
“The problems we’re solving around performance, latency, configurability, cost, are today’s problems, not just quantum-related,” he explains. “If you think about the life cycles of financial data for instance, if you want that data to be secure in the long term, you have to start thinking about it today and transition to making your encryption quantum resilient.”
A Northern start-up with global ambitions
While the duo says competitors like Cisco and Fortinet rely on software encryption, they claim Sitehop’s hardware approach removes “multiple layers” of vulnerability.
“Software has a lot of attack factors and has libraries stacked on libraries, meaning each layer is a potential vulnerability where somebody could inject malicious code and get to the data,” she explains.
“VPNs are being attacked all the time and we see these supply chain issues that hit the headlines, causing billions of pounds of damage. Nobody is going to add encryption if it hits the bottom line. We’re saying we can solve that problem for you.”
Proudly based in Sheffield, the city where Chambers and Harper first met at a previous start-up, the duo say it gives them a unique advantage.
“It has been really good for access to talent. If we were in London, we would be a small fish in a big pond,” says Chambers. ”In Sheffield, we stand out. There are plenty of people from the nearby universities, but we’re running into lots of people who say they love living in the North, but there are no jobs here. We can pick that talent and give them a reason to stay here.”
Now with a team of 30, Harper highlights another, perhaps less obvious, advantage of being based in Sheffield: its rail links.
“Melissa and I are down there a lot. It’s only two hours on the train to get to central London. That’s super important, if we didn’t have that quick train system, we wouldn’t be based in Sheffield.”
As Sitehop grows, they insist the business will always maintain a presence in the city.
“Our R&D will always stay in Sheffield. The team we have here is fantastic. The city has a real community feel — I actually found our fourth employee after chatting to someone in a local barber shop!”
Yet one of the challenges for Northern start-ups looking to scale is still self-promotion.
“I’ve sat at plenty of roundtables where the conversation keeps returning to how people in the North don’t shout about what they do well,” explains Chambers. “We need to shout louder about the amazing things happening up here. If we spoke with a stronger, united voice, the North’s tech scene would get the recognition it deserves — especially from international investors who still see cities like Sheffield as ‘rural England’.”
Earlier this year, Sitehop raised £7.5m in seed funding led by Northern Gritstone, taking its total investment to £13.5m. The company’s products are now live in seven countries, with plans to scale rapidly across both commercial and defence markets.
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Looking to the future, Chambers is confident about the competition… and is certainly not short on ambition.
“When people ask how we’ll compete with giants like Cisco or Juniper, I say: because we perform better. We might be small now, but in five years, I want Sitehop to be listed alongside those names.
“Encryption is the hardest part of cybersecurity — that’s why we’ve already mastered it. That’s how you stand out as a start-up: do something complex, and do it better than anyone else. That’s what we’ve done, and now we will continue to build on that — it’s super exciting. I am going to continue shouting about it because we have something special here. And we really will go all the way.
“We want to be the best in the world. That’s our mission and that’s where we’re headed.”
The focus now? It’s all about “scaling deployments, broadening our platform with new features, and continuing to build the team”.
