I-SENSE is proud to welcome its first Distinguished Speaker of the Fall 2025 Semester, Markku-Juhani Olavi Saarinen, PhD.

In this seminar, Dr. Saarinen will offer some technical and practical lessons he has learned about recent European Union information security regulations related to PQC security chips. This may sound boring from a scientific viewpoint, but it is essential for a security architect as compliance requirements are the main driver for the sales of such chips. Saarinen is currently Finland's representative to CENELEC TC 4​7X "Semiconductor device and trusted chips", which is tasked with turning the security requirements of the EU's Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) into electrotechnical standards. The CRA and its technical requirements are of great interest to chip makers and designers globally, as compliance will be required to sell electrical goods in the EU market (the comparable U.S. "Cyber Trust Mark" program, being introduced by the FCC, will be only voluntary). Among other things, CRA implies supply chain security measures, fairly strict vulnerability reporting timelines and responsibilities, as well as some concrete security features such as secure firmware updates. "Default category" products can get a pass via self-evaluation, but for "Critical category" products (e.g., secure elements), compliance often requires a third-party assessment. Such laboratory evaluation can be done with the EU Common Criteria (EUCC) Certification Scheme; passing requires relatively advanced technical protections.

Dr. Saarinen has worked in cryptography and technical information security since the late 1990s, dividing time between academia and the industry/startups. Before his PhD studies (which focused on symmetric cryptanalysis), he had worked at SSH Communications Security (helping to design the now-ubiquitous SSH2 secure login protocol) and at Nokia Research, both in Finland. Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) has been a research focus since 2015, resulting in numerous publications and a half-dozen patents. In 2018, he was the first employee at PQShield Ltd. (UK), a University of Oxford spin-out focusing on PQC. At PQShield, he architected some of the first commercially successful high-assurance PQC hardware modules before joining Tampere University in 2023. He is currently a member of CENELEC TC 47X (Cyber Resilience Act / Semiconductors) and Chairs the Cryptography SIG at RISC-V International.