Banks, governments and technology providers need to be prepared for quantum computer hackers capable of breaking most existing encryption systems by 2029, Google has warned.
The tech company said in a blogpost that quantum computers would pose a “significant threat to current cryptographic standards” before the end of the decade and urged other companies to follow its lead.
The company, owned by Alphabet, said: “The encryption currently used to keep your information confidential and secure could easily be broken by a large-scale quantum computer in coming years.”
As it stands, quantum computers – which can rapidly carry out complex tasks – are a nascent technology with great potential and significant obstacles to being widely usable.
I mean, they specifically point to post-quantum cryptography and advise people to move towards it in the article:
The issue here is not that there aren’t solutions; it’s that organizations are not interested in taking the time and effort to move towards them. I’ve been beating this particular drum at my org for about a year, and I’ve gotten zero traction. This is a concern because moving to New encryption means taking all the data you’ve got, decrypting it, and re-encrypting it. That’s not fast when you’re talking hundreds of terabytes.
Fairly not super experienced on things. but how viable is a layered system, does it just prohibitively slow or storage consuming or is it moderately feasible to say double encapsulate everything.
Huh, interesting; that’s a good question. I’m not actually sure about that; it’d be a good thing for me to dig into more. Thanks for the thought!