Rethinking the Internet: Innovation, Resilience and Responsibility

What SCION Day 2026 reveals about Switzerland’s innovation paradox and the future of an open Internet

Switzerland excels at innovation. But are we equally good at putting it to work?

At SCION Day 2026, held at ETH Zurich on 27 October, there were encouraging signs that we can. A network architecture born from academic research is now supporting critical financial communications, attracting international providers and finding applications beyond banking. That is an achievement worth recognising. It also raises questions about what comes next. How can Switzerland build on its research strengths to bring new technologies into wider use? And how can it do so without losing sight of the public interest?

For the Internet community, the stakes are particularly high. The Internet grew out of open research, shared standards and international cooperation. As cyber threats and geopolitical pressures grow, security and resilience are becoming more important than ever. But so is preserving the openness that made the Internet successful.

SCION offers an interesting perspective on both ambitions: strengthening the Internet’s technical foundations while keeping it open, globally connected and accessible to different providers and users.

Rethinking the Internet’s Foundations

The Internet was not originally designed for today’s cybersecurity threats. Many of its security protections were added later, as new vulnerabilities emerged.

SCION, developed by Professor Adrian Perrig and his team at ETH Zurich, takes a different approach. It incorporates cryptographic routing verification, explicit path selection and fault isolation directly into the network architecture. In his presentation, Perrig showed how congestion and network failures can disrupt communication. SCION allows traffic to use alternative paths, while its Hummingbird extension enables bandwidth reservations across participating networks to help critical applications maintain more predictable performance during congestion.

This matters in increasingly interconnected systems. Distributed AI workloads, for example, rely on the rapid exchange of data between computing centres. Delays can slow processing and increase costs. For banks, energy providers and other essential services, disrupted connectivity can have more immediate operational consequences.

SCION is also developing in directions that go beyond routing. ETH Zurich’s Clockwire project demonstrated precise time synchronisation across Swiss pilot sites, while open-source improvements are making the technology easier to deploy. Looking further ahead, IBM Fellow Heike Riel explored the promise of quantum computing and its implications for today’s cryptographic systems. SCION researchers are already considering how to prepare the architecture for that future.

It was encouraging to see a technology developed in Switzerland addressing such a broad range of challenges, from practical network reliability to threats that may only become pressing years from now. Yet the ability to make networks more secure also brings greater control over how information travels and who can connect. That deserves attention alongside the technical achievements.

Security, Sovereignty and the Question of Choice

The Secure Swiss Finance Network offers a good example. Built on SCION, it allows authorised financial institutions to communicate within a protected network, reducing their exposure to threats from the public Internet. For critical services, such protection makes sense. But it also raises an important question: who decides who can participate, and how should that authority be exercised?

Technologies developed for protection can sometimes serve other purposes. Under different governance arrangements, the ability to restrict network access could also be used to exclude legitimate participants or concentrate power. This is one aspect of dual-use technology, where the same capabilities may bring benefits or risks depending on how they are applied. There is an important distinction, however, between protecting a specialised financial network and restricting access to the public Internet. The first may be necessary for security; the second could undermine the openness on which global connectivity depends.

The wider debate about digital sovereignty raises similar questions about control and independence.

In his keynote on cyber warfare and geopolitics, Don Eijndhoven argued that Europe’s concern with cloud services and data location often overlooks deeper dependencies involving telecommunications networks, routing and physical infrastructure. His argument challenged the idea that sovereignty requires complete technological independence. A more realistic goal is to retain the ability to choose among providers and technologies rather than become dependent on arrangements that are difficult to change.

SCION has something valuable to offer here. Its path-control capabilities can give users greater influence over how their traffic travels, while a choice of network providers can reduce reliance on any single route or operator. For that freedom to become practical, however, alternatives must be available and interoperable.

Security should protect essential services without creating unnecessary exclusion. And digital sovereignty should expand our choices, not fragment the global Internet.

Switzerland has helped develop a technology that could support both objectives. Bringing it into widespread use is another matter.

Switzerland’s Innovation Paradox

One of the most memorable moments of SCION Day came during a conversation between UBS Group CEO Sergio Ermotti and Martin Jetter, Chairman of the SCION Association. Discussing Switzerland’s ability to turn research into internationally successful solutions, Ermotti remarked:

“We are not doing a good job at all in Switzerland in leveraging innovation into realities that scale up globally.”

Coming from the head of Switzerland’s largest bank, it was a striking admission.

Switzerland has world-class research institutions, a highly skilled workforce and considerable technological expertise. Yet these strengths do not automatically translate into new products and services that achieve widespread adoption. A recent study of Switzerland’s innovation landscape identifies obstacles to developing and adopting new approaches. Some may reflect the way Switzerland has learned to manage uncertainty. Consensus-building, institutional scrutiny and financial prudence have served the country well, encouraging stability and careful decisions. But established procedures can also make it difficult to depart from familiar ways of working. Caution has its place, especially in banking and critical infrastructure, where mistakes can have serious consequences. Still, familiar systems are not necessarily safer simply because they have been in place for years. Their vulnerabilities, dependencies and costs change too.

We carefully examine the risks of adopting something new. But do we evaluate the risks of standing still with equal rigour?

What made SCION Day particularly encouraging was seeing how this tension can be overcome. The Swiss retail payment network is a tangible example. According to Worldline, more than 20,000 payment terminals are connected through SCION-based infrastructure. The technology has moved beyond the laboratory and into a service used in everyday transactions.

UBS provided an even more revealing story: while Ermotti questioned Switzerland’s ability to scale innovation, the UBS panel described how the bank had approached SCION. For years, UBS monitored the technology without a pressing reason to adopt it. That changed when SIX announced plans to retire its existing financial communications network. What had once seemed an interesting possibility became a practical solution. UBS now uses SCION for critical financial communications and is extending its use to building management systems and corporate banking services. The panel also described an unexpected obstacle. Providing corporate customers with SCION connectivity can involve relatively modest technical changes. Persuading those customers and their IT teams to move away from established processes may prove harder. In UBS’s case, the technology was already available. What changed was the reason to use it.

Representatives from banking, energy and defence described comparable experiences during the adopters’ panel. Their accounts showed how much implementation depends on people across organisations agreeing on priorities, taking responsibility and working through practical obstacles. There is something encouraging in that experience. Switzerland’s cautious institutional culture need not prevent innovation. Given a clear purpose, it can provide the discipline and cooperation needed to bring new technology into critical infrastructure.

SCION’s reach is now extending beyond Switzerland. Cyberlink, Inter.link and Anexia  presented connectivity offerings across Europe and North America, while Anapaya and Threema demonstrated the potential for SCION-based secure messaging. The expanding range of services suggests growing momentum. Widespread international adoption will take time, but SCION is no longer simply a Swiss research project looking for applications.

Growth brings its own questions. A technology intended to offer greater control over network paths should not leave users dependent on a narrow group of providers. The SCION Association is promoting open specifications, open-source development and international cooperation. These are important foundations, particularly as more organisations begin to build services around SCION. The commercial ecosystem is still relatively concentrated, and attracting additional providers and independent implementations will help it mature. Open standards make choice possible; a diverse and sustainable ecosystem makes it meaningful.

If SCION can continue expanding internationally while preserving that diversity, it could become an example of how stronger network security and an open Internet can develop together.

Resilience Is More Than Technology

The industry panel with IBM, Accenture, Colt and Extreme Networks raised another issue: preventing cyberattacks is only part of keeping essential systems secure. Organisations must also be able to continue operating, or recover quickly, when something goes wrong.

SCION can help by providing secure routing and alternative network paths. But even a well-protected bank or energy provider remains connected to suppliers, partners and infrastructure it does not control.

A disruption elsewhere can still affect its services.

Resilience depends on knowing where those dependencies lie, preparing for failures and working with others before a crisis occurs. Better network architecture is an important part of that effort, but it cannot replace organisational preparedness.

What Kind of Progress Do We Want?

In his closing remarks, Martin Jetter encouraged curiosity, experimentation and the willingness to act. Refusing change, he reminded participants, carries risks too.

That message stayed with me because SCION Day offered reasons for optimism. Research that began at ETH Zurich is finding its place in financial networks, commercial services and applications that extend well beyond its original purpose. It is an impressive achievement and an encouraging example of what Swiss innovation can accomplish. The opportunities ahead are equally significant. Wider adoption could bring stronger security, more dependable connectivity and greater control over network paths. The way SCION develops internationally will determine how widely those benefits can be shared.

For the Internet Society community, that is what makes SCION worth following closely. Its success offers an opportunity to show that improving security and resilience need not mean sacrificing the openness, interoperability and global reach that define the Internet.

Switzerland has shown that it can help shape the Internet’s future. The real opportunity now is to turn that innovation into lasting progress — building an Internet that is more secure, more resilient and open to everyone.