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New Encryption System Protects Data from Quantum Computers

As quantum computing creeps closer, IBM successfully demonstrates a way to secure sensitive information.

“While quantum computers can do some things better against a particular set of problems, there are tons of other things they just do not help with—almost at all,” Lyubashevsky says. “So these are the types of problems that people are trying to build cryptography on.”

Because there are many of these types of problems, organizations such as NIST are trying to narrow down the potential options in order to develop a standardized method for quantum-proof encryption. In 2016 NIST put out a call for potential postquantum algorithms, and earlier this year it announced it had winnowed 69 accepted submissions down to 26 leading candidates. The plan is to select the final algorithms in the next couple of years and to make them available in draft form by 2024. IBM is not waiting for the results of this competition, however. In August the company announced its researchers had used its NIST submission, a system dubbed CRYSTALS (short for Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices) to successfully encrypt a magnetic-tape storage drive.

Because IBM has also made the system open-source, Lyubashevsky points out, any people interested in protecting their data can try it. “If they really do need their data to be secure 20 years from now, there really are some good options available for the cryptography that they can use,” he says.

See the full story here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-encryption-system-protects-data-from-quantum-computers/