Are You Ready For The Quantum Leap?

Quantum Computing (QC) is a rapidly advancing computing technology that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena to perform certain tasks in a very efficient way. QC is still at the experimental stage but it has the potential to disrupt many areas of IT.

QC has the power to do two main things that even the fastest modern supercomputer cannot do: First, solve extremely useful but extremely hard mathematical problems that would have real-world benefits such as the realization of new drugs and materials, optimization applications, logistics, engineering, etc; and second, break the security of most cryptographic schemes used today, creating unimaginable damage to cybersecurity.

So, QC can be seen as both an opportunity and a threat for society.

Nobody knows for sure and there is a lot of misinformation around this topic. Many overhyped terms such as “Q-Day” add confusion and false expectations.

What we can certainly say is that, although QC was once considered an impossibility, over the years we have witnessed impressive advancements in the technology. Working prototypes are already available, even for commercial evaluation, and some large companies are pouring an impressive amount of money into the R&D. According to most experts, it is now, no longer a matter of “if” but “when.”

In the form of prototypes, QC is already here. For example, some big tech companies and startups are offering early access to QC. But these prototypes are currently of very limited practical use.

On a pragmatic level, one might ask: When will QC be used for real-world applications? Most experts argue that the “closest” target field is going to be chemistry, namely, the discovery of new drugs and catalysts for industrial applications. According to many experts, the application QC technology is very close in this sector, and we should expect commercial breakthrough within a few years.

At the cybersecurity level, what people really care about is this: When will QC break currently used cryptography, like RSA-2048? This will arguably take more time. The first schemes to be broken will probably be elliptic-curve based ones, like ECDSA. Expert estimates on the timeline here vary wildly because, in order to get there, QC must first solve big technical challenges. However, from a CISO perspective, knowing that timeline is not that relevant.

There are three reasons why the timeline of real-world applications in quantum computing is not relevant to security leaders.

First, because CISOs focus strategy on risk rather than assurance. QC-breaking cryptography might turn out to be impossible, or it might take a single little scientific breakthrough to accelerate the engineering process and swiftly bring havoc to cybersecurity.

If there is even just a 20% probability that QC will break your encryption within 5 years from now, it’s a risk that cannot be ignored.
Which brings us to the second reason: Mitigating this risk takes significant time and investment. It’s a huge effort to switch to more secure cryptographic algorithms or hardware, to change standards, or to re-issue critical keys or certificates. AES, the commonly used cryptographic standard, was published in 2001, and there are industries that are still struggling with it.

Even for a relatively “agile” field like smartphone manufacturing, it takes many years from chip and system design to market launch, and then the product must remain secure and viable on the market for many more years. Mitigation in this context can only be proactive, never reactive.

The third reason is that, for certain applications, it might already be too late. It is known that adversarial actors have already started to harvest encrypted information and to store it with the view to future decryption, the so-called “store-now, decrypt-later” attack. Those data have to be considered already well on its way toward compromise – it’s just a matter of time. By the time QC will be able to decrypt, most of the data will be worthless, but some might still be very valuable.

It is imperative that CISOs start addressing the issue now (see below), without waiting for QC to be powerful enough to cause disruption.

In short, they all are. But industries that are particularly vulnerable are those that deal with very sensitive data (military, finance, diplomacy, etc), all kind of communication providers, especially those with a focus on security (satellite, VPNs, e-voting, telcos, etc), and industries that provide products and services with a long shelf-life (healthcare and genomics, heavy industries, SCADA manufacturers, high tech engineering, robotics, logistics, all kind of transportation, etc).

You should consider switching to quantum-secure technologies, such as quantum-secure encryption and quantum cryptography. This is especially crucial for business dealing with very sensitive information (military, diplomacy, e-voting, etc) and/or very long lifecycle products or services (health/genomics, aviation, transports, naval, heavy industries etc). In the very long term (5-10 years) it looks like quantum information networks might allow novel security features like physically uncloneable data or networked quantum computing.

You should assess your quantum threat exposure and start implementing a quantum-resistant migration strategy. This might include:

1. Quantum threat assessments (understand what assets are more at risk and have long-term value)
2. Cryptographic inventories (identify and list all keys, certificates, libraries etc used within the organization or a subsystem of it)
3. Migration strategy planning, with prioritization of high-severity issues, cost/benefit tradeoffs etc
4. Implementation and deployment of quantum-secure cryptography (for example NIST standards, but there is also other non-NIST approved schemes which have large support, for example from the German government or many Internet associations)
5. Implementation and deployment of so-called “hybrid” solutions, which combine two layers of quantum-vulnerable and quantum-resistant cryptography.
6. Deployment of quantum hardware solutions, for example QKD or QRNG. Although the cost of deployment is usually high, the benefit/cost ratio might make sense for certain businesses.
7. Most importantly, education and training. Quantum security is a complex and evolving topic, so it’s crucial for an agile organization to educate policymakers, tech leaders and engineers.

Kudelski Security and Kudelski IoT can help with all the above steps: from threat assessment to crypto inventory, from security monitoring and reporting to countermeasures deployment, from hardware evaluation to secure architecture and IP design. We have the skills and expertise to help organizations migrate smoothly to a quantum-secure future. We can also provide a vast range of trainings, from exec level to engineering.

Yes. We have many experienced professionals and PhDs with specialization in areas such as cryptography, quantum computing and quantum communication. Our experts have published at prestigious academic venues, talked at large cybersecurity conferences, and taken part in regulatory and standardization initiatives such as the NIST PQ competition. If you want more references, get in touch!

Quantum-resistant cryptography is cryptography that can be used today on a classical computer, but which builds its security on mathematical problems so hard that they are widely believed to be intractable even for a future QC.

Other terms for identifying this technology are “quantum-safe”, or “post-quantum” cryptography.

Crypto agility is a product development strategy that focuses on allowing functionality based on different cryptographic standards rather than focusing on a specific one. This allows seamless replacement of a cryptographic algorithm (with certain constraints) in the case that one is deprecated either because of new vulnerabilities or because of standard expiration.

Quantum cryptography is a branch of cryptography that deals with quantum, rather than classical, data. It can be divided in many categories, but a common criterion is as follows: Quantum cryptography requires some form of special quantum hardware to run, either a full quantum computer or something more elementary.

“Quantum Key Distribution” is a form of quantum cryptography. The term is often mistakenly considered a synonym for “quantum cryptography”, but QKD is actually a very narrow subfield of quantum cryptography. It does not solve every cryptographic problem, but only a very specific one: The secure exchange of symmetric keys between two remote parties who share a special quantum channel (like an optic fiber or laser).

QRNGs stands for quantum number generators. These devices use quantum effects to generate random data that is “really” random, and not the output of some complex mathematical process as in the case of commonly used pseudorandom number generators (PRNG).