$16M Fuels Lastwall’s Push for Quantum-Resilient Cyber Defense

Lastwall has secured $16 million in new funding, led by BDC Capital’s StrongNorth Fund, as the company expands its U.S.-proven cyber defense platform into the Canadian market. The investment marks StrongNorth Fund’s first cybersecurity investment and represents the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s largest single investment to date. After nearly a decade securing some of the world’s most sensitive government environments, including achieving FedRAMP Moderate Authorization, Lastwall is now applying its capabilities across U.S. and Canadian defense and civilian systems. “We proved our model in the world’s most demanding federal market,” said Karl Holmqvist, Founder and CEO of Lastwall. “We earned FedRAMP Moderate Authorization, secured U.S. government systems, and built a platform for modern cyber warfare.”

$16 Million Investment Fuels Lastwall’s Canadian Cyber Defense Expansion

A $16 million funding injection will extend Lastwall’s cyber defense capabilities from the United States into the Canadian market, addressing a growing need for sovereign security solutions amid escalating digital threats. The investment round, led by BDC Capital’s StrongNorth Fund, is the fund’s first in cybersecurity. This expansion builds on nearly a decade of experience securing sensitive government environments. The funding will facilitate applying battle-tested capabilities across U.S. and Canadian defense and civilian systems, offering a trusted, interoperable option for high-assurance identity security. Peter Suma, Managing Partner at BDC Capital, highlighted the strategic alignment of Lastwall’s technology with the fund’s objectives, stating that the identity platform “addresses a critical vulnerability across defense, government, and infrastructure systems.” Holmqvist added that Lastwall intends to protect critical systems on both sides of the border.

Lastwall’s U.S. FedRAMP Authorization & Proven Government Security

Following a decade of securing some of the world’s most sensitive government environments, Lastwall is expanding its cyber defense capabilities into the Canadian market, supported by a recent $16 million investment. This expansion is directly linked to Lastwall’s achievement of FedRAMP Moderate Authorization, a rigorous certification that enabled operation within the U.S. federal ecosystem and validated the platform’s security. The company intends to leverage this foundation to offer both U.S. and Canadian systems battle-tested capabilities. Beyond traditional cloud environments, Lastwall’s platform secures access in challenging conditions, including air-gapped systems and those operating with limited bandwidth, where conventional identity solutions often falter.

Lastwall fits that focus: its identity platform addresses a critical vulnerability across defence, government, and infrastructure systems operating in increasingly complex and contested environments.

Peter Suma, Managing Partner at BDC Capital

Identity-First Security for Critical Infrastructure & Quantum Resilience

Lastwall, a firm specializing in identity-first security, recently received $16 million in funding to bolster Canadian cyber defenses after nearly a decade securing some of the world’s most sensitive government environments. The company now intends to apply its capabilities across U.S. and Canadian defense and civilian systems. The platform secures access across diverse environments, including those with limited or intermittent connectivity, where conventional identity systems often falter. Beyond immediate threats, Lastwall is also building quantum-resilient protections into its authentication systems, anticipating the future capabilities of quantum computing to break existing encryption.

Lastwall intends to be at the center of the mission to protect our continent, which means helping defend critical systems on both sides of the border.

Karl Holmqvist, Founder and CEO of Lastwall
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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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