First quantum-cryptography-secured broadcast signal strengthens integrity and authenticity for democratic information.
On May 4th, 2026, zerothird participated in a joint press conference at the
Austrian Parliament, together with
ORF and
Big Blue Marble, marking a milestone for media infrastructure and democratic resilience: a TV/broadcast signal from the Parliament was secured using quantum cryptography.
The shared objective is clear: where institutional communication and public-service media must be trusted,
integrity and authenticity must become verifiable end-to-end. As the information environment changes through AI-enabled manipulation and increasingly accessible offensive tooling, democratic institutions and broadcasters need security models that are designed to make interference
detectable, not merely suspected after the fact.
Karl-Heinz Grundböck of the Austrian Parliament framed the initiative as part of a broader modernization effort, positioning the Parliament as a
reliable source of information in the digital space and strengthening the technical foundations behind parliamentary transmissions. This deployment is a
time-limited pilot (three months) and focuses on securing the broadcast transmission between the Parliament and ORF.
Harald Kräuter, Technical Director of ORF, underlined why integrity has become a core requirement for public-service broadcasting: manipulation does not have to be obvious to be damaging. If a statement arrives “different from what was actually said”, trust erodes immediately, especially in an environment where AI can fabricate and alter content convincingly. For ORF, the benchmark remains:
where ORF is on the label, quality and truth must be inside. ORF is therefore using this technology to protect that standard.
Michael Wagenhofer, CEO of Big Blue Marble, highlighted the operational priority behind the collaboration: the
integrity and authenticity of the transmitted information, alongside its reliable availability. The pilot demonstrates how an uninterrupted security chain can be implemented in real broadcast workflows, raising resilience for critical communications where manipulation must not remain invisible.
zerothird’s role is to provide the quantum-cryptographic security layer that supports an integrity-first approach to critical communications, built for environments where trust must hold up under adversarial conditions, public scrutiny, and long-term accountability. And in this case, as Rupert Ursin (CEO of zerothird) framed it: to protect the highest form of critical infrastructure: Democracy.
The project video is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie3J_v5WcVgThe ORF report is available here:
https://orf.at/stories/3428759/The Big Blue Marble press release is available here:
https://www.bigbluemarble.com/en/resources/post/milestone-for-austrias-media-and-democracy-first-tv-broadcast-secured-with-quantum-cryptography/Coverage by derStandard is available here:
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000319205/aus-dem-parlament-wird-erstmals-mit-quantenverschluesselung-uebertragen
