Quantum Leap or Quantum Bust?

So after your explanations to the CEO two weeks ago on flattening networks and last week on the differences between SSL and TLS, your Director has asked you to give your opinion on Quantum Cryptography. Specifically, should your organization develop third party management (TPM) risk policies for quantum-resistant cryptography (QRC)? Should you require vendor solutions to include QRC? Is Quantum Computing a threat? If so, when? Is QRC a threat? If so, when? Discuss a time frame in your report and limit your response to 100 words. Your director will use your report in the August Board Meeting, so this is great exposure for you. An Overview of Classical Computing Before exploring Quantum Computing, we must first address what is classical computing. Classical Computing in a digital sense began with the Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC) opens in new window in 1946. This massive computer weighed 30 tons and covered an area of about 1,800 square feet with over 17,000 vacuum tubes. However, in many ways, modern classical computing (even cloud) still works like the ENIAC. How? The ENIAC’s vacuum tube served as a binary device, the tube is either on (1) or off (0). Today a transistor represents a single bit and 8 bits make a byte. Eight bits represent values from 0-255. If you are unfamiliar with this principle, watch this short video (Why Do Computers Use 1s and 0s? Binary and Transistors Explained). opens in new windowSo over the evolution of classical computing, we went from 8-bit to 16-bit, 16-bit to 32-bit and now 64-bit architectures. Processors went from single processors to multi-processors to know multi-core processors and groups of multi-core processors. Virtualized hosts from mainframes and VMS along with server clusters and shared storage led to Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing in a very real sense is doing the same thing the ENIAC did faster by using more resources that still operate in a binary function. Everything in today’s digital world is either a 1 or a 0. It is important to note that Quantum Cryptography was developed two decades before the first Quantum Computers.