Manama, Bahrain – December 23, 2025 —
The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) of the Kingdom of Bahrain has announced a landmark strategic partnership with SandboxAQ, a global leader in AI-driven cybersecurity and cryptographic management, marking one of the world’s first large-scale national commitments to building a quantum-safe economy.
The partnership establishes a nationwide cybersecurity modernisation framework designed to protect Bahrain’s sovereign data, critical infrastructure, and sensitive government and private-sector systems against emerging cyber, cryptographic, and quantum computing threats. As a founding member of the UNICC AI Hub on Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), SandboxAQ will support Bahrain in operationalising post-quantum protection at national scale.
The announcement comes amid growing global concern over “Q-Day” — the point at which cryptographically relevant quantum computers are expected to break today’s widely used encryption standards. While experts estimate such capabilities could emerge as early as 2029, the threat is already active through “harvest-now, decrypt-later” attacks, where adversaries collect encrypted data today with the intent to decrypt it once quantum capabilities mature. For governments, this includes highly sensitive assets such as classified communications, defence data, diplomatic records, and national identity systems.
Under the partnership, Bahrain will deploy SandboxAQ’s AQtive Guard platform, an AI-powered cybersecurity solution designed to enable large-scale AI deployment while modernising defenses for the post-quantum era. The platform provides full visibility, assessment, and remediation of cryptographic vulnerabilities, including risks arising from weak encryption and the rapid growth of AI agents and non-human identities.
The deployment will span more than 60 ministry environments across the Kingdom, requiring cryptographic security management at unprecedented national scale.
His Excellency Shaikh Salman bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, CEO of Bahrain’s National Cyber Security Center, said:
“This partnership with SandboxAQ marks a significant milestone in our mission to secure Bahrain’s sovereign data, intellectual property, and digital assets from evolving internal and external cyber threats. SandboxAQ’s expertise in AI-driven cybersecurity will help protect our citizens, businesses, and government institutions, while laying the foundation for a new era of security and economic growth.”
Mohammed Aboul-Magd, Vice President of Product, Cybersecurity at SandboxAQ, added:
“Bahrain is taking a bold and forward-looking step by not only defining policy, but by operationalising the technologies required to defend against rapidly advancing threats. This partnership establishes a dynamic framework that allows the Kingdom to adapt quickly as new vulnerabilities emerge, setting a new benchmark for cyber resilience across the region.”
The initiative forms a core pillar of Bahrain’s long-term cybersecurity strategy, reinforcing the Kingdom’s commitment to secure digital transformation, national data protection, and sustainable economic resilience in the post-quantum era.
About SandboxAQ
SandboxAQ is a B2B company delivering solutions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and quantum techniques. Its Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) drive advances across cybersecurity, life sciences, materials, and advanced computing, in partnership with NVIDIA. SandboxAQ emerged from Alphabet Inc. as an independent company backed by leading global investors and strategic partners.
