Issue 4 Summer 008
Quantum Leap: Cryptography of the future
by Craig Hilton
Quantum Technology has the potential to introduce new threats from
fraudsters as they access the capability of colossal computing power
which could render some of today’s defences impotent. But the future isn’t
completely bleak. The same quantum technologies that raise this threat
also offer a potential solution – Quantum Cryptography.
Fraud is a war of attrition between financial services QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY
organisations and criminals wanting to steal data from Quantum technology is a new field of physics
them and their customers. Industry standard encryption and engineering, which uses elements of quantum
techniques used to encrypt sensitive information theory as the basis for practical applications.
transmitted between IT systems, are crucial tools in the Examples include quantum computing, quantum
armoury of financial services organisations. So far, these cryptography and quantum imaging.
mechanisms have not been a focus for fraud attacks
due to the vast amount of computing power required to CRYPTOGRAPHY
break an encoded message. Cryptography describes the process of
scrambling and unscrambling a message so
That will change if the field of quantum computing that an eavesdropper cannot read it. Standard
becomes mainstream. Today’s computers manipulate approaches to cryptography underpin all
data stored as 1s and 0s (bits) and follow the traditional secure communication used by commercial
laws of physics. Quantum computers manipulate data organisations and individuals.
encoded within quantum particles (photons, electrons,
ions and atoms – qubits) and thanks to the laws of
quantum physics can perform parallel processing on a
massive scale. A criminal armed with a quantum computer
could break a coded message in a matter of seconds.
Quantum Technology
8 | Perspectives on technology
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