Payment Industry Systems Need to Be Future-Proofed to Protect Against Quantum Computing Breaching

(ATM.Marketplace) The arrival of quantum computers is potentially game changing for the payment industry.
Jurjen Bos, the cryptographer and corporate information security advisor for equensWorldline, with tagline “Digital Payments for a Trusted World” is the author here who believes that “any claims that quantum computing is close to breach the currently used cryptography systems are highly exaggerated”.
However, research in quantum computers is advancing very quickly which suggest a tipping point is on the horizon. For banks and financial institutions, and those that rely on systems to store, process and protect classified information for a very long lifetime, the time to act is now and they should start preparing to replace the algorithms, while there is still time.
For the payments industry, it is important to be prepared and remember that early payment systems used classic cryptography systems for keeping our transaction systems running. The following preparation steps are recommended:
• Using “pluggable” systems such as TLS that allow changes to a different algorithm when needed
• Be prepared to go back to the “old fashioned” symmetric algorithms, since these are easy to protect against quantum computers
The payment security systems need to be re-designed and future-proofed with advanced cryptography in order to protect against the possibility of quantum computing breaching existing IT and payment security protocols.