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“The real threat of an opponent of nation-states being able to get a large quantum computer and access your information is real,” says Dustin Moody, a mathematician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “The threat is that they copy and hold encrypted data until it becomes a quantum computer.”
In the face of this “decipher the harvest now and then” strategy, officials are trying to develop and deploy new encryption algorithms to protect against a class of powerful machines that are creating secrets. This includes the Department of Security, which says it is making a long and difficult transition to what is known as post-quantum cryptography.
“We don’t want to end up in a situation where we wake up one morning and there has been a technological breakthrough, and then we have to do three or four years of work in a few months, with all the extra risks. that, ”says Tim Maurer, the home security secretary who advises on cybersecurity and new technologies.
DHS recently released a road map for the transition, starting with the call to catalog the most sensitive data, both within the government and in the business world. Maurer says it is an essential first step “to see which sectors are doing this and which ones need support or awareness to make sure they take action now.”
Prepare in advance
Experts say it may still take a decade or more for quantum computers to be able to achieve anything useful, but as money is flowing in the field in China and the US, the race is moving forward to implement this and design better protections against quantum. attacks.
The US, through NIST, has joined forces competition Since 2016, it aims to produce the first algorithms against quantum computers by 2024, according to Moody, which is leading the project on post-quantum cryptography at NIST.
Switching to new cryptography is a very difficult and lengthy task, and it’s easy to ignore it until it’s too late. It can be difficult for for-profit organizations to spend on an abstract threat to the future years before that threat becomes a reality.
“If organizations don’t think about transition now,” says Maurer, “and then they get overwhelmed when the NIST process is over and there is an urgent feeling that it increases the risk of unforeseen events … transition is never a good idea.”
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