Cybersecurity

Information overload: The promise and risk of quantum computing

...The most suitable applications for quantum computers are problems with large, multi-dimensional parameter spaces that require the manipulation and optimization of significant numbers of independent variables. Consider the ways important national security information is protected and accessed, in technical terms, the ways it is encrypted and decrypted. Due to the high processing power of quantum computers, modern encryption methods that would take classic computers a long time to break would be rendered useless. The unique physical properties of proposed quantum computers would allow them to seek all possible solutions to an encryption algorithm simultaneously, giving an answer that reflects the probability of each outcome. This ability puts national-security-sensitive data at risk. In fact, hackers are already banking on this potentiality and storing available data until some point in the future when the data may be decrypted with quantum computers.