The Potential of Quantum Computing

“It could allow a quantum computer to complete in minutes, computations so complex, that it would take today’s supercomputers millions of years.”

As Hannah Fry discusses in her recent Bloomberg Originals episode on quantum computing, the technology has the potential to revolutionise industries of all shapes and sizes. Pharmaceutical companies will be able to speed up the laborious process of drug discovery by improving their ability to identify and match molecules, while the financial sector is set to benefit from analytical capabilities orders of magnitude better than anything currently available.

Quantum technology will have a profound impact on many aspects of society, particularly on information security. Transitioning to quantum methods will be crucial to protect data from attack by all future computers.

That’s because that very same power that can be used to drive progress can also be used to break the encryption methods that protect the vast majority of our communications and data today. These encryption methods, often based around Public Key Encryption (PKE), are predicated on the idea that the computations required to break the numerical keys are impossible for todays classical computers to carry out in any realistic timeframe.

While quantum computers that are powerful enough to do this in practice don’t currently exist, they are no longer on the horizon, but rapidly approaching in the rear-view mirror.

On top of this, today’s data is already under threat. Malicious actors can intercept and hold sensitive encrypted data today, such as government communications, financial data or medical records (which by their nature need to be kept secure for many years), and crack them in the near future when quantum computing is available.

Organisations can take action today to secure this data, though, as Andrew Shields, the Head of Quantum Technology at Toshiba, explains to Hannah Fry in her Bloomberg Originals documentary.

To learn more about the benefits of quantum computing, the threat it poses, and how Toshiba’s Quantum Key Distribution technology is already being used to protect our data, watch the full episode here.