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Solutions ReviewsContributed Content Series is a collection of contributed articles written by thought leaders in enterprise software categories. Zibby Kwecka of Quorum Cyber examines the current and future states of quantum computing, and the inevitable threat of a quantum attack.

The threat of quantum computing is very real, today. As of July 2022, 25 percent of Bitcoin and 66 percent of Ether are vulnerable to quantum attacks (Deloitte, 2023). These can be secured with action, however, even if a small number of these currencies are stolen, the market disruption may significantly devalue assets.Quantum computers have the potential to solve certain complex mathematical problems significantly faster than classical computers. One of the most notable implications is their ability to break encryption algorithms that rely on the difficulty of factoring large numbers or solving logarithm problems. There are theoretical methods to crack our current encryption methods that would be possible on a conventional computer, however widely inefficient. Quantum will allow the cracking of keys thousands of times more efficiently, making it possible to break todays encryption in just a few cycles. Thankfully, for now, scale remains a problem for quantum computing.

Once quantum computers become a tool thats commercially available and matured, its expected attackers will take advantage of this to break current encryption methods, creating a significant risk to the security of our sensitive data. Using this technology as a platform for an attack is a concern for organizations, not just on the cryptography front.The threat of quantum computing becoming part of an actors offensive toolbox is likely. Taking advantage of decryption techniques, forging certificates, or its potential ability of rapid machine learning, could vastly speed up network recon and eavesdropping, and forging identities.

Just because quantum computing isnt here yet doesnt mean we shouldnt be aware of the risk. Data may already have been stolen, or harvested, for later yield. While it may not be currently feasible to decrypt your data yet, once it becomes a viable and affordable measure through quantum computing, harvested data and communication traffic could be decrypted. This may be assisted by projects from Microsoft and IBM aiming to offer cloud-based multi-quantum computing facilities on a consumption model.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been calling for the development of encryption methods that would remain resistant to the advantages of quantum computing, with the first four quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms announced back in 2022 (NIST, 2022). There is a future of using quantum computers to vastly improve our digital security, but theres a risk of being in a very dangerous limbo between the threats posed and the future of greater security. Currently, there are several limitations preventing development at scale, which may take years to overcome.

The most likely quantum attack would involve breaking cryptographic systems of communication methods we use today. This isnt just a future problem; however, its happening already. The widely known Harvest Now, Decrypt Later operations store stolen information that will later be decrypted using advanced technology. This might be years away, but depending on the sensitive information, it could still enable extortion against organizations or individuals. Its a compelling argument to encourage businesses to purge old data thats no longer required.

Future cyber-attacks will involve hybrid approaches that combine classical and quantum computing techniques. Quantum computers are great at operating in parallel states, and thus, it would be natural to apply them to fuzzing systems and finding vulnerabilities. The added fuzzing ability of quantum computers could drastically speed up attacks aiming to penetrate a system. Fuzzing tests programs by using numerous randomized inputs, and could be a perfect use for quantum machines.

Current RSA encryption relies on 2048-bit numbers. In 2019, quantum computers were only able to factor a 6-bit number. In 2022, that number only increased to 48-bits under a highly specialized environment (Swayne, 2022). There is the expectation within the next 10 years we could be at a point where current encryption methods are at risk. The current development is exponential (Deloitte, 2023).A recent mandate from the US Congress declares a 2035 deadline for quantum-resistant cryptography to be implemented (Executive Office of The President, 2022), but it could be sooner.

The exponential development of artificial intelligence (AI) underway may, at some stage, support scientists in solving some of the challenges currently faced. For a quantum computer to undertake a task the problem statement must be translated into a format a quantum computer can actually work with first. This is a laborious task, and hence apart from the high cost of entry to the quantum computing attacks because of the hardware costs, there is an even higher ongoing cost associated with translating targeted problem statements into something that can be tested. This is why cryptographic use cases are currently prevalent when quantum is discussed. They are repetitive, as we only use a handful of cryptographic algorithms to secure the digital world. However, AI will one day enable us to rapidly create translations of human-readable problem statements, and software to be tested, into the code that can be processed by a quantum computer, and this is when the full capabilities of this technology will be reached.

There are several actions that should be considered:

To start using quantum machines to solve real-world problems, we feasibly need a machine capable of at least 1 million stable qubits (Microsoft, 2023). Currently, the qubits in existence suffer at scale for several reasons, one of which is quantum decoherence making each qubit only available for a short period of time. As far as research goes, weve only just reached over 100 qubits (Ball, 2021). Until these challenges are overcome the use of quantum computing is limited.

Link:
The Threat of Quantum Computing - Solutions Review

After reaching impressive milestones in 2023, technology giant IBM (NASDAQ: IBM)has announced its quantum computing roadmap with plans to increase the capabilities of its systems tenfold.

In ablog post, IBM says it will adopt a 10-year plan, underscored by rapid quantum innovation, to realize its mission for practical use cases for the emerging technology. With a target for 2033, the road map unveils multiple generations of processors, with each offering building on the technical achievements of others.

The roadmap comes on the heels of the launch of the IBM Condor, a 1,121 qubit quantum processor, leveraging IBMs proprietary cross-resonance gate technology. IBM Condors release has been described as an innovation milestone as it marks the first time IBM has broken the 1000-qubit barrier.

IBM says it will proceed with the mainstream rollout of Heron, its highest performing quantum processor that will be the foundation of the hardware roadmap over the decade.

The roadmap lists several processors to be rolled out in the coming years, targeting 2029 as an inflection point in its quantum computing ambitions. IBM predicts a watershed moment in 2029 via its Starling process, which can execute 100 million gates, a huge gap from Herons 5,000 gates.

By the end of the 10-year roadmap, IBM says it will be able to execute 1 billion gates, a nine-order-of-magnitude increase since rolling out its first device back in 2016.

Then, in 2029, we hit an inflection point: executing 100 million gates over 200 qubits with our Starling processor employing error correction based on the novel Gross code, read the blog post. This is followed by Blue Jay, a system capable of executing 1 billion gates across 2,000 qubits by 2033.

Rather than focusing all its efforts on innovation, IBM says it will update its offering for utility, providing users with a Qiskit Runtime service to power experiments. The company confirmed a similar upgrade for its IBM Quantum Safe and an integration with watsonx for generative AI to push the frontiers for adoption.

Entering the era of utility opens up new opportunities for enterprises to engage with quantum computing and explore workforce integration, said IBM. We are expanding our enterprise offerings to continue to advance industry use cases for utility-scale quantum computing.

A worrying trend for the US and China

Despite taking the lead in quantum computing and otheremerging technologies, pundits have pointed to a growing innovation trend outside the U.S. and China in other emerging jurisdictions. In late November, IBMinstalledthe first utility-scale quantum system outside North America at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

China faces a dilemma after Alibabashut down its quantum computing unit to focus on AI, putting a dent in its plans to become an industry leader.

Experts say the chip embargo placed on China by the U.S. contributes to the shuttering of Alibabas (NASDAQ: BABA) quantum research arm, with the company pledging to donate its lab equipment to Zhejiang University.

Watch: Konstantinos Sgantzos talks AI and BSV blockchain with CoinGeek

New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeeks Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.

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IBM quantum roadmap targets inflection point by 2029 - CoinGeek

IBM announced the unveiling of its 1,121-qubit Condor quantum computing processor on Dec. 4. This is the companys largest by qubit count and, arguably, the worlds most advanced gate-based, superconducting quantum system.

Alongside the new chip, IBM delivered an updated roadmap and a trove of information on the companys planned endeavors in the quantum computing space.

The 1,121-qubit processor represents the apex of IBMs previous roadmap. Its preceded by 2022s 433-qubit Osprey processor and by 2021s 127-qubit Eagle processor.

In quantum computing terms, qubit count isnt necessarily a measure of power or capability so much as it is potential. While more qubits should theoretically lead to more capable systems eventually, the industrys current focus is on error correction and fault tolerance.

Currently, IBM considers its experiments with 100-qubit systems to be the status quo, with much of the current work focused on increasing the number of quantum gates processors can function with.

For the first time, writes IBM fellow and vice president of quantum computing Jay Gambetta in a recent blog post, we have hardware and software capable of executing quantum circuits with no known a priori answer at a scale of 100 qubits and 3,000 gates.

Gates, like qubits, are a potential measure of the usefulness of a quantum system. The more gates a processor can implement, the more complex functions can be performed by the system. According to IBM, at the 3,000 gates scale, its 100-qubit quantum systems are now computational tools.

The next major inflection point, per the blog post, will occur in 2029 when IBM will execute 100 million gates over 200 qubits with a processor its calling Starling.

This is followed, writes Gambetta, by Blue Jay, a system capable of executing 1 billion gates across 2,000 qubits by 2033.

Related: IBM brings utility-scale quantum computing to Japan as China and Europe struggle to compete

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IBM says it will have hit a quantum computing 'inflection point' by 2029 - Cointelegraph

How do you see AI and new technologies accelerating sustainability? and how it can accelerate sustainability as well.

We have very tangible examples of when we talk about sustainability. At least speaking for myself, we struggle in terms of understanding what sustainability is and how we can make it actionable. How can we track if some promises are kept? Can we measure what the Kenyan government is doing in terms of reforestation over time, for example?

The geospatial foundation model we have created [at IBM] is helping us quantify climate mitigating actions like reforestation, but also helping us understand how particular measures like putting up a fence can help. Its very encouraging because, not only can you see masses of trees growing, you can also quantify how many gigatons of carbon you can capture over the years.

So you make it tangible. That's probably one of my favourite aspects of what technology can do for sustainability.

As a computer scientist, there are very rare moments where you see history happening. In quantum this year, we have managed to achieve one which we call quantum utility. We have entered the quantum utility era.

Quantum utility is when you take a problem, and this case it was a small magnetisation problem, and we tasked one of our partners, the University of Berkeley to do their best classically, and we have taken the same problem. We map it to a quantum computer with our hardware today and we apply some error mitigation routines that we have created on top of our stack. These error mitigation routines are now available to everyone.

We were then in a position of showing better performance than the classic. So for the first time, we see for real, quantum utility beating classic in this particular experiment.

When we talk about quantum, we always talk about fault tolerance - having the perfect system with no computing errors. What we are doing now is trying to find, with our partners, more and more examples of this quantum utility - much broader and bigger examples of showing that the current quantum hardware is improving. Our operation routines can get us there.

First of all, how can we change our approach to build the hardware? Because we saw it classically, right? We started with bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger machines until we discovered that we needed to go modular.

What we are doing now is working on modularity for quantum processing - but modularity means that you need to establish the connectivity between the units. So we first started looking at classical links, but in the future we will also see quantum communications happening between the units, which is quite challenging. There's a bit of research behind it, from the hardware perspective, that's probably one of my personal highlights.

Another highlight probably is that I hope that we announce that we keep firmly implementing every milestone that we set ourselves in our roadmap.

You will see many companies working with [IBM] and many partners presenting quantum utility experiments already. That's going to be very refreshing - it's going to create a lot of momentum when more and more people see that. In this particular case, quantum: it's classic. So that's going to create a good vibe in the quantum community.

There is so much happening at the same time and at such speed.

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5 minutes with: Dr. Juan Bernabe Moreno, IBM - Technology Magazine

Lately I am reading about everything Quantum. I am using Obsidian.md to keep track of all knowledge gathered even from books. I havent set a time goal, am just reading and learning at my pace. So the following article is some preliminary thoughts on the matter of Quantum Computing.

Quantum computing is a revolutionary technology that has the potential to change the way we live and work. In this article, we will explore how quantum computing could impact various aspects of our everyday lives and the challenges it presents.

Quantum computing could lead to smarter phones, computers, and other devices that are significantly faster and more efficient than current models. This technology could enable better performance and data processing, improving our overall user experience.

Quantum computing could revolutionize healthcare by enabling faster drug discovery, disease diagnosis, and personalized treatment plans. It could also help in understanding complex biological systems and developing new therapies for various diseases.

Quantum computing could help in predicting weather patterns and climate changes, enabling us to reduce the risk of natural disasters and plan for sustainable development.

This technology could lead to more accurate and reliable weather forecasts, ultimately improving our ability to prepare for and adapt to climate change.

As classical encryption schemes could be broken by quantum computers, the development of quantum-safe cryptographic methods is essential for maintaining the security of our digital communications. This technology could help protect sensitive data and ensure the privacy of our digital transactions.

Quantum computing could enable the discovery of new materials with unique properties, leading to advancements in various industries, such as aerospace, electronics, and healthcare. This technology could help scientists simulate and analyze the behavior of complex molecules and materials at the quantum level, ultimately enabling the discovery of new materials with novel properties.

While quantum computing holds great promise, it also presents challenges and potential risks. As the technology continues to evolve, it is essential to stay informed about its progress and implications for our lives and society.In conclusion, quantum computing is a promising technology with the potential to change various aspects of our everyday lives. As research and development continue, we can expect to see more exciting advancements and applications in the near future.

By staying informed and engaged with the latest quantum computing developments, we can better understand and harness the power of this revolutionary technology.

References:

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Quantum Computing in Everyday Life: The Future is Here - Medium