Dwaine Snow

IBM Global Technical Leader - Cyber Resiliency

In the coming years quantum computers will likely change the face of cyber security. Once Quantum computers can
reliably factor products of large prime numbers (the basis of current cryptography), existing cyber defense mechanisms
will be rendered obsolete. While Quantum computers are not strong enough (or stable enough) today to break into most
encrypted data files and systems using current encryption technologies. Everyone expects that they will be in the not -
too-distant future. Updating current systems, solutions/software, and infrastructure will take time, so it is important that
everyone start today to protect their current data and systems from the hackers who are stealing data today to break into
tomorrow.

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 Moore’s law is
coming to an end and
today’s classical
computers are
reaching their limits,
just as our demand
is starting to surge

In 1965, Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors on a given area of a silicon computer chip was doubling
every year. He predicted this doubling of density would continue well into the future, though the time frame was later
revised to 18 to 24 months.

For Moore’s Law to survive this long, chip designers and engineers have consistently shrunk the size of features on
chips. The most advanced laboratories today are experimenting with chip features that measure only 5 nanometers. (A
nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter.) These features are so small that some need to be measured in individual atoms.

But now, physical limits are creating serious headwinds for Moore’s Law. Some chip industry leaders point to the
massive expense and effort required to sustain it. One estimate is that the research effort to keep Moore’s Law on track
this far has increased by a factor of 18 since 1971. And the facilities needed to build modern chips cost $16 -20 Billion
USD apiece in 2022 (source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/18/tech/us-chip-manufacturing-semiconductors/index.html).

Even Moore himself expects that Moore’s law will end sometime around 2025 (source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law).

What all this indicates: the slowdown of improvements in classical computing only escalates the importance of
integrating quantum computing with classical systems.

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For decades, quantum computing has been viewed as a futuristic technology: it would change everything, if it ever
moved from the fantastical to the practical. Even in recent years, despite billions of dollars in research investment and
extensive media coverage, the field is sometimes dismissed by real-life decision makers as too arcane, a far-off, far-out
pursuit for academics and theorists.

But, the Quantum era is officially here. The primary shift is a computing paradigm that’s evolving from an age of
analytics (looking back at established data and learning from it) to an age of discovery (looking forward and creating
more accurate models for simulation, forecasting, and optimization). There’s real potential for uncovering solutions that
were previously impossible.

3
 Quantum super
computers are next

Late in 2022, IBM set the record for the largest quantum computing system with a processor that contained 433 quantum bits, o r
qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum information processing. Now, the company has set its sights on a much bigg er
target: a 100,000-qubit machine that it aims to build within 10 years.

IBM made the announcement on May 22, 2023 at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. The company will partner with the
University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago in a $100 million dollar initiative to push quantum computing into the real m of
full-scale operation, where the technology could potentially tackle pressing problems that no standard supercomputer can solve.

Or at least it can’t solve them alone. The idea is that the 100,000 qubits will work alongside the best "classical" supercomp uters to
achieve new breakthroughs in drug discovery, fertilizer production, battery performance, and a host of other applications. “I call
this quantum-centric supercomputing,” IBM’s VP of quantum, Jay Gambetta, told MIT Technology Review in an in -person
interview in London in May, 2023.

Sources
• https://lnkd.in/g28hQW5T
• https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073606/ibm -wants-to-build-a-100000-qubit -quantum-computer/

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 Hackers WILL use Quantum computers for malicious purposes

Evil doers always find

Hacker states have

Since 1994, scientists have known that, in principle, a quantum computer should be able to crack so -called public-key
encryption schemes. For the sake of efficiency, such schemes are typically used to initiate private communications on
the internet or some other network. Often, the public-key algorithm serves only to communicate another key, a secret
one that two correspondents—say, Alice and Bob—use to initialize a second separate encryption program that they use
in parallel to encode and decode the bulk of their message. Still, if an eavesdropper—say, Eve—can hack the public-key
system, she can steal the secret one and decode the entire exchange.

In current public-key systems, the public key is a gigantic number that is the product of two factors, both prime numbers.
If Alice wishes to receive a secret message from Bob, she sends him the key and he uses it to scramble his numerical
message according to a complicated algorithm that’s publicly known. But it’s very difficult for Eve to undo the algorithm
unless she knows the key’s prime-number factors. Alice keeps those factors as her private key, which enables her to
quickly unscramble Bob’s message. However, a quantum computer would be able to factor the huge number much
faster than an ordinary computer, enabling Eve to unscramble the message quickly.

In the not-too-distant future, mega data-breaches will become frequent. Quantum computers will also revive the risks
from past breaches, because hackers will be able to use the hardware to decipher data they’ve already stolen. Both
business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) customers will demand post-quantum data security, and
companies that cannot provide it are likely to lose out on the license to operate. This looming threat has led to a
countdown: Years to Quantum, or Y2Q.

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 Countdown to Y2Q

Click here for

This slide is self explanatory, and no speaker notes are needed. Just click the link and open the page.

Link is to the 2021 Quantum Threat Timeline Report ( https:// globalriskinstitute.org/publication/2021-quantum-threat-