19.11.2021

Keeping data secure on the internet: Advancing quantum light sources for encryption

Professor Monika Fleischer, Annika Mildner and others bring us closer to a simple and efficient method of quantum encryption:

Adapted from a press release by Tali Aronsky, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 16.11.2021.

Quantum computers will revolutionize our computing lives. For some critical tasks they will be mind-bogglingly faster and use much less electricity than today's computers. However, and here’s the bad news, these computers will be able to crack most of the encryption codes currently used to protect our data, leaving our bank and security information vulnerable to attacks. Currently, most computer security relies on mathematical manipulations that, at present, ensure a very high level of security—it would take a regular computer billions of years to break one of those codes. However, in our quantum future, new methods of encryption that rely on the laws of physics, rather than mathematical equations, will need to be developed.