The development of quantum computers is well under way. Even though these machines are still in relatively early development stages it will not be long before the adoption of quantum computing becomes mainstream in many industries.
Over the past few years, some remarkable milestones have been achieved by different technology leaders in this field. For instance, Google was able to construct a quantum computer in 2019 which could do a mathematical calculation in 3 minutes 20 seconds, which would have taken a regular supercomputer 10,000 years to solve. Currently the most advanced development is IBM’s Quantum Condor processor with a 1,000-qubit capacity. Quantum computing increasingly provides great opportunities to enterprises, especially in the field of new drug discovery, financial trading, and supply chain optimisation. But with its great benefits, it also brings along some major threats that need to be mitigated in order to protect highly sensitive information concerning people, organisations, and nations.
In this report we analyse the contexts in which quantum computing can pose a threat to present-day security systems and approaches to mitigate the risks. We talk in detail about post quantum cryptography (PQC) and quantum key distribution (QKD), today’s two major techniques that can be used to protect data from the threat of quantum attacks.
The report also highlights different advances that are being made in order to ensure data protection along with a range of use case examples in which quantum-safe security is being implemented to safeguard user information.
Lasty, we also profile some of the players that are providing quantum-safe security to organisations and highlight the different products and systems they are using in order to do so.
