IBM: Quantum Computing Poses 'Existential Threat' to Data Encryption

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For years, encryption has played a central role in securing corporate data. However, as quantum computers become more advanced, traditional encryption solutions and public key cryptography (PKC) standards, which enterprises and consumer vendors rely on to secure their products, are at serious risk. decryption.

Today, the IBM Institute for Business Value released a new report titled Security in the Quantum Era, examining the reality of quantum risk and the need for enterprises to adopt quantum security capabilities to protect the integrity of critical applications and infrastructure as the risk of decryption increases.

The report claims that quantum computing poses an "existential risk" to conventional computer encryption protocols, and notes that cybercriminals are already potentially exfiltrating encrypted data with the intention of decrypting it once quantum computers have progressed as part of "harvest now, decipher the attacks layer."

The problem of traditional encryption and quantum computing

One of the main limitations of traditional cryptographic protocols such as RSA is that they rely on mathematical problems such as factoring large numbers, which are simple enough for a quantum computer to solve by brute force .

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With a quantum computer, cryptographic protocols “can in theory be solved – and solved within hours – using Shor’s algorithm,” the report states. "This makes protocols like RSA an insufficient cryptographic scheme in a future where quantum computers have reached their full potential."

Although this process has not yet taken place, more and more organizations are taking the risk of this decryption seriously. In December 2022, President Biden signed the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Readiness Act encouraging government agencies to adopt technology resistant to post-quantum decryption.

Similarly, last year, NIST concluded its search to identify quantum-resistant algorithms that had been in progress since 2016, choosing four algorithms as finalists and selecting CRYSTALS-Kyber, a key encryption algorithm public and CRYSTALS-Dilithium, a digital signature algorithm. , as its two main chosen standards.

IBM's network-based approach to quantum encryption

As the global quantum cryptography market is expected to grow from $89 million in 2020 to $214 million by 2025, IBM has actively established itself as a leader in the field alongside other vendors such that