The rise of quantum computing paints a significant challenge for the cryptography we rely on today. The modern encryption standards we currently use to safeguard sensitive data and communications, such as DSA, public key RSA and those based on elliptic curves, will eventually be broken by quantum computers. Estimates vary on when, but at current rates of improvement, this is predicted by some to happen towards the end of the next decade.
Michele Mosca, co-founder of the Institute for Quantum Computing at Canada’s University of Waterloo, has estimated that there is a 50% chance of a quantum computer powerful enough to break standard public-key encryption materializing in the next 15 years. This means many embedded systems in development now stand a reasonable chance of encountering such an attack by the end of their production run’s working lives. It has also been posited that sensitive data can be stored today and decrypted once quantum computers become powerful enough.
This threat extends across various industries, with financial institutions, health organizations and critical infrastructure—including energy and transport—most at risk.
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