Overview
Imagine opening Netflix to watch something relaxing after a long day. But instead of picking a movie, you find yourself endlessly scrolling romance, thrillers, documentaries, trending shows, new releases. Ten minutes pass, then twenty, and you’re still deciding. That’s exactly what life feels like today. We’re surrounded by so much information and so many options that even making small decisions can feel overwhelming.
Now think about how our brain works. It’s powerful, but when too many choices and combinations come in, even the smartest minds get stuck.
Now, let’s shift this confusion to something more serious like what happened during COVID. Scientists across the world were in a race against time to develop a vaccine that could save millions of lives. But it wasn’t easy. They had to analyze endless combinations of virus behavior, immune responses, and molecular structures. Every decision mattered because each one could mean the difference between success and failure, between saving lives or losing them.
In situations like this, where complexity is high and time is limited, we need machines that can think and compute much faster than even the best supercomputers.
That’s where Quantum Computing comes in. It’s no longer a futuristic idea. It’s already real. Companies like IBM have built IBM Quantum System One, and Google has developed Quantum AI with its Sycamore processor. These machines are designed to process millions of possibilities at once and find the best solution much faster than traditional computers.
In short: when the world is flooded with data and decisions are urgent like during a pandemic quantum computing could be the key to finding answers in time.
When Quantum Power Breaks Traditional Encryption : Are we Ready?
As this power of quantum computing becomes more available and reliable the world will have in its hand the ability to make complex decisions within minutes which with a classical computer might take billions of years. With this power, our security keys, the most popular RSA keys, which keep us safe from the dark world can be broken within hours if not minutes. What happens then? Nothing on the internet would be safe and we could come to a grinding halt.
What is our answer. Are we prepared? Our scientists have found the solution in Quantum cryptography.
Quantum Cryptography Explained : The Future of Secure Communications
What is quantum cryptography? Before we delve into it. We first need to know a few concepts. In Quantum world, data is stored in qubits and not bits. Values which the qubits can store is not just 0 and 1 but also a combination of 0-1 like it could be 30% 0 and 70%1 OR 45% 0 and 45% 1, etc. This specific property is called superposition. The second property is called entanglement where one qubit is linked with another qubit state so any change in one qubit affects another and so on and so forth. Now how is this capability of qubits utilized to design quantum cryptography. In quantum cryptography, we don’t have keys as binary patterns of 0 and 1. Instead the key is a sequence of photon particles. Photons spin can be changed when they pass through a filter. There are two types of filters, rectilinear and diagonal. The two parties decide on the scheme and store the photon spins only when it passes through the right filter. The interested parties decide beforehand on which filters they will use. If their filters do not match, the spin value is not stored. Therefore, for a set of photons, there is 50% probability that the two parties would have used the right filter and then they store the right bits which becomes the key.
Now, someone might wonder what if a third person tries to secretly listen in using their own filters? Here’s the catch: We have a rule in quantum physics called the Heisenberg principle, the moment someone tries to look at or measure the photons, their state (or spin) changes. This change alerts the original two people that someone is spying, so they can immediately discard the key and stay safe.
Quantum Cryptography : Safe. But Only Up to 150 km?
Beautiful. Aren’t we all feeling relieved that with the advance of quantum computing, we still have a haven in the form of quantum cryptography? But like every coin, quantum cryptography has a flip side when it comes to real-world implementation.
On one hand, the extreme sensitivity of photons allows us to detect hacking attempts very early. On the other hand, that same sensitivity makes it extremely difficult to transmit photons over long distances. As of today, the maximum distance over which scientists have successfully transmitted quantum keys is around 150 kilometers. Beyond that, we’re still experimenting.
Transmitting photons through optical fibers requires dedicated connections to avoid noise, and the process is far slower compared to the internet speeds we’re used to today. Until human intelligence comes up with reliable ways to transmit photons over greater distances, we still have a long road ahead.
An intermediate step may be to incorporate non-quantum elements, this is where projects like Quantum Xchange come in. Quantum Xchange is building a quantum communication network over the existing fiber-optic cable. Rather than relying purely on quantum signals, they use a smart hybrid approach. Their system, Phio Trusted Xchange (TX), sends encryption keys separately from the main data stream. This helps protect against attacks and supports both quantum and classical encryption methods.
It’s not a perfect solution, transmitting pure quantum data over long distances still faces limitations. But for now, combining classical and quantum technologies helps bridge the gap.
Closing Thoughts
Quantum Cryptography is still nascent, and we need our tech giants and intelligent brains to devise ways to utilize this branch to avoid the threat posed by the hackers as for sure “Quantum cryptography is unhackable” a statement no cryptography algorithm can ever promise.
