As the Internet turns 50, what’s next?
In 1969, two men changed the course of technology when they transmitted a message between computers miles apart. The concept of the internet was born 50 years ago when a UCLA professor and a Stanford Research Institute grad student had the idea to send a message from Los Angeles to Stanford over the ARPA connection, known as ARPANET. Little did they know at the time, but this monumental message put things in motion for the technology we enjoy today.
Now fast forward 30 years when the World Wide Web made its debut and the Internet became mainstream and this new digital connectivity fundamentally changed the world. The Internet’s power began to shape our lives about the time Google became a verb. As technology exploded, so did the need for security.
At the threshold of quantum communications, the Internet will eventually take a quantum turn.
A quantum Internet could be the savior for tasks that call for coordination, synchronization, and privacy and security at the highest levels. Even though we are years away from a full-fledged quantum Internet, researchers argue that that quantum technology would complement rather than replace the existing Internet.
Communication on the Internet is secured by Public Key Exchange (PKE) and digital signatures are crucial in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol which serves as the backbone for secure information on the Internet. Consequently, PKE is susceptible to attacks as nefarious actors compromise certification authorities. In fact, according to a study at the University of MD, a cyber attack occurs every 39 seconds and cyber criminals steal today what they plan to decrypt when universal quantum computers become available in the future.
As technology evolves at a record pace, there are ways to prepare an existing encryption environment for the emanate quantum threat using Phio TX. While it fits seamlessly within your current encryption environment, it can provide quantum-safe exchange now and provide the crypto-agile infrastructure to plug in additional kinds of quantum-safe technologies should you choose to do so in the future such as Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology, post-quantum algorithms and quantum random number generators.
Quantum Xchange solutions lay a critical pathway to cybersecurity and provide enterprises a quantum-safe infrastructure against inevitable risks. These solutions allow clients to retain control over encryption and critical data using a fiber quantum network that is resistant to a quantum attack.
