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A DigiCert study found that 55% of business Information Technology (IT) specialists are concerned about the impact of quantum computing on cryptography. The company explained in a statement that 71% consider this technology to be a threat in the future and many have heard of quantum computing, but few know what it is.

Although it is a technology that is not widely used, physicists have been talking about quantum computing for more than 30 years. But how can this new computing help? Quantum computing will fundamentally increase processing power, which could mean exciting advances from particle physics to machine learning to medical science, he noted. He added that companies can prepare for and anticipate the challenges that quantum computing poses, increasing the crypto-agility that identifies and replaces outdated cryptographic algorithms when necessary. Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) can also be identified to protect custom keys that are used in your public key infrastructure (PKI).

That is why it is important for companies to investigate how they are being used, if they can be upgraded to support quantum security encryption and, if so, how quickly those upgrades could occur, he said. He recommended relying on SSL / TLS certificates that allow website visitors to know that it is authentic and that the data they enter will be encrypted. An important approach to preparing for post-quantum cryptographic threats is to gain encryption agility. A properly implemented AOSSL makes it easy to update encryption algorithms in response to future threats from quantum computing, said Avesta Hojjati, Director of I + D from DigiCert.

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Concerns about the impact of quantum computing on cryptography, . - Explica

In the curious world of quantum mechanics, a single atom or subatomic particle can exist simultaneously in multiple conditions. A new UC-led, multiuniversity institute will explore the realities of this emerging field as it focuses on advancing quantum science and engineering, with an additional goal of training a future workforce to build and use quantum computers.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $25 million over five years to establish the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute (QLCI) for Present and Future Quantum Computation as part of the federal governments effort to speed the development of quantum computers. The institute will work to overcome scientific challenges to achieving quantum computing and will design advanced, large-scale quantum computers that employ state-of-the-art scientific algorithms developed by the researchers.

There is a sense that we are on the precipice of a really big move toward quantum computing, said Dan Stamper-Kurn, UC Berkeley professor of physics and director of the institute. We think that the development of the quantum computer will be a real scientific revolution, the defining scientific challenge of the moment, especially if you think about the fact that the computer plays a central role in just about everything society does. If you have a chance to revolutionize what a computer is, then you revolutionize just about everything else.

Unlike conventional computers, quantum computers seek to harness the mysterious behavior of particles at the subatomic level to boost computing power. Once fully developed, they could be capable of solving large, extremely complex problems far beyond the capacity of todays most powerful supercomputers. Quantum systems are expected to have a wide variety of applications in many fields, including medicine, national security and science.

Theoretical work has shown that quantum computers are the best way to do some important tasks: factoring large numbers, encrypting or decrypting data, searching databases or finding optimal solutions for problems. Using quantum mechanical principles to process information offers an enormous speedup over the time it takes to solve many computational problems on current digital computers.

Scientific problems that would take the age of the universe to solve on a standard computer potentially could take only a few minutes on a quantum computer, said Eric Hudson, a UCLA professor of physics and co-director of the new institute. We may get the ability to design new pharmaceuticals to fight diseases on a quantum computer, instead of in a laboratory. Learning the structure of molecules and designing effective drugs, each of which has thousands of atoms, are inherently quantum challenges. A quantum computer potentially could calculate the structure of molecules and how molecules react and behave.

The project came to fruition, in part, thanks to a UC-wide consortium, the California Institute for Quantum Entanglement, funded by UCs Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI).The MRPI funding opportunity incentivizes just this kind of multicampus collaboration in emerging fields that can position UC as a national leader.

This new NSF institute is founded on the outstanding research contributions in theoretical and experimental quantum information science achieved by investigators from across the UC system through our initiative to foster multicampus collaborations, said Theresa Maldonado, Ph.D., vice president for Research and Innovation of the University of California. The award recognizes the teams vision of how advances in computational quantum science can reveal new fundamental understanding of phenomena at the tiniest length-scale that can benefit innovations in artificial intelligence, medicine, engineering, and more. We are proud to lead the nation in engaging excellent students from diverse backgrounds into this field of study.

The QLCI for Present and Future Quantum Computation connects UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Santa Barbara with five other universities around the nation and in California. The institute will draw on a wealth of knowledge from experimental and theoretical quantum scientists to improve and determine how best to use todays rudimentary quantum computers, most of them built by private industry or government labs. The goal, ultimately, is to make quantum computers as common as mobile phones, which are, after all, pocket-sized digital computers.

The institute will be multidisciplinary, spanning physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and optical and electrical engineering, among other fields, and will include scientists and engineers with expertise in quantum algorithms, mechanics and chemistry. They will partner with outside institutions, including in the emerging quantum industry, and will host symposia, workshops and other programs. Research challenges will be addressed jointly through a process that incorporates both theory and experiment.

Situated near the heart of todays computer industry, Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach, and at major California universities and national labs, the institute will train a future workforce akin to the way computer science training at universities fueled Silicon Valleys rise to become a tech giant. UCLA will pilot a masters degree program in quantum science and technology to train a quantum-smart workforce, while massive online courses, or MOOCs, will help spread knowledge and understanding of quantum computers even to high school students.

This center establishes California as a leader nationally and globally in quantum computing, Stamper-Kurn said.

The institutes initial members are all senior faculty from UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Southern California, the University of Washington and the University of Texas at Austin.

We still do not know fully what quantum computers do well, Stamper-Kurn said, and we face deep challenges that arise in scaling up quantum devices. The mission of this institute is to address fundamental challenges in the development of the quantum computer.

More information on NSF-supported research on quantum information science and engineering is available at nsf.gov/quantum.

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New UC-led institute awarded $25M to explore potential of quantum computing and train a future workforce - University of California

PQShield, a spin-out from the UK's Oxford University, is developing advanced cryptographic solutions for hardware, software and communications to protect businesses' data from the quantum threat.

The development of quantum computers poses a cybersecurity problem such as the IT industry has never seen before. All stored data currently deemed secure by modern standards whether that's health records, financial data, customer databases and even critical government infrastructure could, in theory, be cracked by quantum computers, which are capable of effectively short circuiting the encryption we've used to protect that data until now.

Efforts to protect our data from the quantum threat are underway, though whether the issue is being looked at with the urgency it deserves is up for debate. PQShield, a post-quantum cryptography startup spun out of Oxford University, perceives a disconnect between the scale of the threat and the current cyber-readiness of most businesses in 2020, which it is now trying to address.

SEE: Quantum computing: Myths v. Realities (TechRepublic)

"The scale of the quantum attack is just too big to imagine," Dr. Ali Kaafarani, research fellow at Oxford's Mathematical Institute and founder of PQShield, tells TechRepublic.

"The most important part of what we're doing is to educate the market."

Kaafarani is a former engineer at Hewlett-Packard Labs and leads a team of 10 full-time quantum cryptographers, from what he estimates to be a worldwide pool of just a hundred or so. The company is busy working on the development of quantum-secure cryptography encryption solutions for hardware, software and communications that will secure information from future risk, yet can be implemented using today's technology.

This comprises a system on chip (SoC) and software development kit that allow companies to create secure messaging applications, protected by a "post-quantum" variant of the Signal cryptographic protocol. Central to PQShield's technology is that it is designed to work with both legacy systems as well as those expected in the years to come, meaning it could offer protection for everything from keyless cars and other connected devices, to data moving to and from cloud servers.

This, Kaafarani explains, is important owing to the fact that post-quantum cryptography cannot be retrospectively implemented meanwhile data encrypted by modern standards remains open to post-quantum threats. "What we're using right now as end-to-end encryption...is secure now, but people can intercept them and steal encrypted data," he says.

"Once they have access to a quantum computer, they can decrypt them, so confidentiality is threatened in retrospect, because whatever is considered confidential now can be decrypted later on."

Kaafarani also perceives an issue with the current attitudes to remediating cyberattacks, which he likens to applying a band-aid to a repeating problem.

SEE: SSL Certificate Best Practices Policy (TechRepublic Premium)

"That's why we started PQShield to fill in this gap, to lead the way to a smooth and secure transition to the quantum era. There is a real opportunity here to get things right from the beginning."

The startup recently completed a 5.5m funding round led by VC Firm Kindred Capital and has now secured German engineering company Bosch as its first OEM customer. While the exact details of the deal are still under wraps, Kaafarani says the deal is indicative of the threats businesses are beginning to identify as the age of quantum computing approaches.

"Their hardware may be built to last, but right now, their security isn't," he says.

"If you're designing a car that's going to go on the roads in the next three years, if you're doing security by design, you should be thinking of the next security standards: not the standards that are valid now, but the standards that will be valid in the next five, 10, 15 years," he says.

"Future-proofing is an imperative, just as it is for the banks and agencies that hold so much of our sensitive data."

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The future of encryption: Getting ready for the quantum computer attack - TechRepublic

Quantum computers promise to be game-changers in fields where there are enormously complex calculations to be carried out. Hoping to use quantum computing to address one of humanitys biggest problems climate change investigators from Microsoft Research and ETH Zurich have developed a quantum algorithm they say is able to simulate catalytic processes extremely quickly. In doing so, they claim that it could be used to find an efficient method for carrying out carbon fixation, cutting down on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by turning it into useful compounds.

At present, synthetic catalytic processes are discovered using laborious trial-and-error lab experiments. Computer simulations are much faster, but modern computers have a difficult job calculating the properties of very complex molecules. By contrast, Microsofts quantum catalytic simulation algorithm reportedly beats existing state-of-the-art algorithms by 10 times; boding well for the transformational possibilities of using quantum computing as a cornerstone of future chemistry.

Our unique approach pushes the boundaries to deliver the promise of quantum computing and to create unprecedented possibilities for our world, Matthias Troyer, distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research, told Digital Trends. Quantum computing is redefining what is possible with technology, creating unprecedented possibilities to solve humanitys most complex challenges. Microsoft is committed to turning the impossible into reality in a responsible way that brings the best solutions to humanity and our planet.

Troyer explained that the advancements in algorithms gained from this research will serve as a springboard for future work. Microsoft is hoping that it will be able to work alongside the chemistry community to find new ways for quantum computers to help develop new chemical processes, molecules, and, eventually someday, materials. The research is available to read via Microsofts blog.

This isnt the first promising quantum algorithm Digital Trends has covered this month. Recently we wrote about a quantum algorithm that could help revolutionize disease diagnosis. However, like all quantum algorithms, it is going to rely on quantum computers advancing sufficiently in order for researchers to be able to gain the most benefit from it. The hardware this will require is another topic Microsoft discusses in the research paper on this work.

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Microsofts plan to scrub carbon out of the atmosphere? Quantum computers - Yahoo! Voices

Many videos describing quantum computers try to distill and oversimplify everything. Thoughty's takes its time and gives more historical and theoretical context than most.

Because it does take a while to get into the subject, here's a shorter explainer by MIT:

Today's computers use bitsa stream of electrical or optical pulses representing1s or0s. Everything from your tweets and e-mails to your iTunes songs and YouTube videos are essentially long strings of these binary digits.

Quantum computers, on the other hand, usequbits, whichare typically subatomic particles such as electrons or photons. Generating and managing qubits is a scientific and engineering challenge. Some companies, such as IBM, Google, and Rigetti Computing, use superconducting circuits cooled to temperatures colder than deep space. Others, like IonQ, trap individual atoms in electromagnetic fields on a silicon chip in ultra-high-vacuum chambers. In both cases, the goal is to isolate the qubits in a controlled quantum state.

The processing power possible through these controlled qubits will make today's fastest computers look positively archaic.

Image: YouTube / Thoughty2

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This simple explainer tackles the complexity of quantum computing - Boing Boing