A demonstration of cascading digital failures, starting with internal websites and escalating to emergency access, earned Cogito Group the Disaster, Emergency and Risk Management category at the Australian Technologies Competition, the company says. The Canberra-based cybersecurity company pitched its SecureSME service by simulating a complete system shutdown for judges, highlighting the critical need to manage digital certificates and keys.
“If your post-quantum plan is not locked in this year, you are already behind the timetable ASD has set,” warns Cogito Group co-founder Richard Brown, as organizations face mounting pressure from both artificial intelligence and the approaching threat of quantum computing. Fifteen years of development culminated in the SecureSME platform, now positioned for global expansion following the award presented on September 15.
SecureSME Wins Australian Technologies Competition Award
The SecureSME service, built on the company’s fifteen years of development, identifies, issues, renews, and cancels these essential digital credentials, positioning Cogito Group for expansion into global markets. The competition judges evaluated SecureSME’s ability to address a growing threat landscape shaped by both artificial intelligence and the looming arrival of quantum computing. AI agents now require unique digital identities to access corporate systems, increasing the volume of certificates needing management, while advanced attacks use AI to forge messages and impersonate users.
“Some boards treat this as a renewal. It is not. It means replacing every key on every device and every signed document in the organisation, and you cannot replace what you have not found. The first step is discovery, and most organisations have never counted their certificates,” said Richard Brown, Cogito Group co-founder and Managing Director.
This discovery phase is important because organizations often lack a comprehensive understanding of their existing certificate infrastructure. The urgency of preparing for post-quantum cryptography is also driving demand for SecureSME, with the Australian Signals Directorate mandating a transition away from vulnerable algorithms by 2030. Cogito Group’s platform already issues hybrid and pure post-quantum certificates from its own Common Criteria certified certificate authority, and is listed by the United States National Information Assurance Partnership program.
“We are building PKI networks that are secure against quantum computers today,” said Richard Brown, emphasizing the platform’s proactive approach to future-proofing digital trust. Unlike competing solutions that require a complete overhaul, Cogito Group’s Jellyfish platform allows organizations to migrate certificate authorities incrementally, minimizing disruption to ongoing operations, according to the company.
The potential consequences of certificate failures are significant, as illustrated by recent incidents. In December 2018, an expired certificate at O2 took 25 million mobile customers in the United Kingdom offline for a day, and in February 2026, an expired certificate brought down the Australian Senate’s web services for six hours.
These outages, Cogito Group points out, were not the result of malicious attacks, but simple administrative oversights. SecureSME is offered as a subscription service starting at US$399 a month, delivered through managed service providers, and currently supports over 10,000 businesses and government entities running on the Jellyfish certificate authority. “Competitions like this matter because they put Australian founders in front of judges who have built and sold companies, and they force you to explain your technology to people outside your own industry,” said Bernadette Brown, Cogito Group co-founder and Director.
“We have spent fifteen years building this layer for governments and business. Standing in a room with 30 other Australian technology businesses, all of them solving hard problems, is a reminder of how much capability this country has.”
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