What will be the single greatest cyber security threat in the next 5 years and what can be done to proactively address it?
Cybersecurity of the Internet to protect the user's identity and sensitive personal information to prevent malicious third party from intercepting messages is based on RSA Encryption. It has stood the test of time for 40 years, making it the algorithm of choice for encrypting Internet credit-card transactions, securing e-mail messages, authenticating telephone calls, etc.
RSA Encryption is a public-key cryptographic system with asymmetric keys, and is widely used for secure data communications. One key (the public key) is used to encrypt the message while a different key (the private key) is used to decrypt it. Its algorithm is based on the fact that large numbers are easy to multiply but hard to factor. An encryption key M is the product of two large prime numbers P and Q (M = P * Q). Breaking the encryption key comes down to finding P and Q, given M. This becomes extremely difficult to calculate for a large values of M.
A quantum computer is a computation system that makes direct use of quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform operations on data. It is the ultimate code-cracking machine. Conventional digital computers are based on transistors, and require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1). Quantum computers use qubits (quantum bits), which can be in superpositions of states. The quantum chip considers every possible solution all at the same time, instead of sequentially. Quantum computers will eventually create cryptographic codes that are much harder to break.
The public-key cryptographic systems rely on the integer factorization problem or discrete logarithm problem, both of which would be easily solvable on large enough quantum computers using Shor's algorithm. At present, quantum computers are not powerful enough to attack real cryptographic systems. However, quantum computers are advancing rapidly, and are expected to become a cybersecurity threat in the next 5 years or so. If they fall into the wrong hands such as a hostile state-sponsored organisation, then they could crack existing RSA codes and create a havoc in personal privacy, electronic commerce, Internet banking, etc.
Therefore, it is imperative that the quantum computing facilities be protected and secured properly, both physically with secure buildings and logically with secure firewalls on the network.
