ENCRYPTION – THE PROCESS OF scrambled message that only the intended recipient’s device can decode – allows private and public sectors alike to safeguard information. Traditional encryption uses schemes based on complex mathematics such as factoring (breaking an integer down to its prime factors) or discrete logarithm. Classical computers would require billions of years to crack these codes. Quantum computers, however, won’t be stumped by such hard problems; their exponential leaps in processing power will render classical cyphers obsolete, potentially exposing troves of sensitive data across commercial entities, healthcare providers, government institutions and billions of individual users.
