Quantum Security Experts at IQT Recommend ‘Be Prepared’ in Face of Quantum Deployment

(SG.ChannelAsia.tech) The stalwart building block of present-day computing is about to be eroded by the advent of quantum computing within the next decade, according to experts who spoke at the Inside Quantum Technology Conference in Boston last month. Jon Gold of Network World provides an excellent summary in this article and includes comments from speakers and sessions that addressed quantum security at the event.
Quantum computers are more or less fringe technology in 2019, but their development has accelerated in recent years, and experts at the IQT conference say that a spike in deployment could occur as soon as 2024. “About 99 per cent of online encryption is vulnerable to quantum computers,” said Mark Jackson, scientific lead for Cambridge Quantum Computing, at the IQT conference.
Lawrence Gasman, president of IQT, compared the current state of quantum computing development to that of fibre-optic networking in the 1980s – a technology with a lot of promise, but one still missing one or two key pieces. Pure research, the military, and the financial sector are the prime movers behind quantum computing in general and quantum security in particular, according to Gasman.
The precise day of the shift to quantum will vary by industry, according to Paul Lucier, vice president of sales and business development at quantum computing security vendor Isara. It’s verticals like the automotive industry and the infrastructure sector that have to worry, Lucier said. Anything with a long service life and anything that’s expensive to repair and replace is potentially vulnerable.
“Be Prepared,” the experts at the IQT conference all agreed.