The following post is an excerpt from a contributed opinion piece in CIO Dive by ISARA CEO Scott Totzke.
Visualize your morning commute going catastrophically haywire as hackers take control of every self-driven car on the road, forcing them to speed up or change direction. Imagine global databases of personal financial information exposed as the U.S. Federal Reserve’s encryption system suddenly disappears and every currency exchange is shared.
Cyberattacks like these aren’t science fiction. They may be years away, but with the impending arrival of quantum computing and the security threats it brings, breaches like these can quickly become realities, and sooner than you may think.
Academics and experts agree that a universal quantum computer capable of cracking current cryptography will become available within the next decade. Rather than betting on exact arrival dates, CIOs and business leaders can proactively prepare for the technology’s inevitable impact by understanding potential threats and implementing quantum-ready security solutions that are already available.
The arrival of quantum computing has the potential to dramatically change our society and daily lives.
The quantum computers’ ability to process and analyze enormous sets of data, for instance, will solve problems once thought insurmountable, such as curing disease through the creation of customized, designer drugs based on a person’s specific genome. Or possibly designing super-conducting materials to reduce or eliminate energy loss over our power grids, eventually overhauling infrastructure for greater efficiency.
Its inherent capabilities also create extreme risk for security breaches. Quantum computers will be able to solve the complex mathematical problems that we rely on today to protect everything done online, from online banking to using a VPN to connect to a network.
That security goes away the moment there is a quantum computer that can break the encryption in place to protect it.
Read the complete article on CIO Dive.