| |APRIL 20228QUANTUM COMPUTING & AI REVOLUTIONIZING CRYPTOGRAPHY & SECURITYBy Utpal Chakraborty, Chief Digital Officer, Allied Digital ServicesIn his 22 years long career, Utpal has worked with multinational corporations such as IBM, Capegemini, Firmenich, L&T Infotech, and YES Bank, to name few.hile the next big computer race is al-ready underway, some of the biggest technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, and few oth-ers are already exploring their quan-tum computing technology in vari-ous avenues. Quantum computers would be used to create a new generation of very powerful, low-cost computing ecosystem that will cater to the demand of parallel computation.We will not go into the fundamentals of cryptog-raphy and quantum properties like superposition and interference or `Shor's Algorithm' in this article. We would rather briefly discuss the challenges that are emerging in the conventional cryptographic and security arena, as quantum computers are add-ing-up more qubits onto it and becoming more pow-erful.Cryptographers have been working for years to prepare for the possible arrival of quantum com-puters by developing so called quantum-secure en-cryption methods. Fearful about the fact that quan-tum breakthroughs are imminent and threaten the sanctity of known encryption algorithms, cryptog-raphers were seeking to develop quantum-resis-tant crypto that can withstand the intervention of a quantum computers. It all started with the assumption that classical computers will never be powerful enough to crack AES and RAS. But all assumptions came under threat when quantum computers came into picture. Although AES-256 symmetric keys are believed to be quantum resistant, if the quantum algorithm can run on a large-scale quantum computer, it will be capable of cracking even such strong encryptions to the point where all your encrypted data at rest as well as transit are at risk. Of course, quantum com-puters will have to add more qubits onto itself before it can break such a fairly complex encryption. But that's just a matter of time, because the speed it is advancing at, the day is not far when it will be able to crack almost every encryption that is built using conventional methods.Good news is, given the work already underway, researchers have started developing quantum se-cure cryptography before large quantum comput-ers with large number of qubits become available to break RSA. Quantum computers are unlikely to WExpert OpinionUtpal Chakraborty, Chief Digital Officer
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