Cybersecurity

Tomorrow’s Quantum Computers Are Already Threatening Today’s Data


It may seem like the plot of a new Terminator movie, but quantum computers from the future are threatening government data today. But before you accuse me of wearing my tinfoil hat a little too tightly, consider the fact that the future we are talking about may not be that far off. IBM perfected a 50-qbit quantum computer last year and recently opened up its older 20-qbit model for anyone to play with on the web. They estimate that large-scale quantum computers are a mere five years, or less, away.

If you need a quick refresher course on quantum computing, feel free to read my explainer column from a few years ago as it has all the details, including a video from the National Science Foundation talking about quantum technology. Suffice to say, quantum computers look at all the possibilities for a bit of information at the same time, as opposed to traditional computers, which mush everything into a long series of ones or zeros. With a quantum computer, each bit of data is a one and a zero, and everything in between, all at the same time.