In 1994, an American mathematician named Peter Shor discovered a way to crack the codes that banks, e-commerce platforms and intelligence agencies use to secure their digital information. His technique, dubbed Shor’s algorithm, drastically shortened the time it took to find the prime numbers that underlie public-key cryptography, making codes that typically take thousands of years to break solvable in a matter of months.
But there was a catch: Shor’s algorithm could only run on a quantum computer, and those didn’t exist yet.
A quarter-century and many research dollars later, the world still hasn’t created a quantum computer capable of breaking public-key encryption in any reasonable amount of time. However, those machines are much closer to the horizon today than they were in the mid-1990s, and the cybersecurity community is already hedging its bets against a future when digital secrets are knowable to anyone with the right hacking chops and a couple dozen qubits.
When it comes to fighting quantum-enabled threats, timing is of the essence, according to Dr. Deborah Frincke, director of the National Security Agency’s research branch.
Since about the time Shor unveiled his algorithm, Frincke has heard scientists predict quantum computers would arrive within roughly two decades. While those early predictions were overly optimistic, today many more people are backing that 20-year timeframe, Frincke said in a conversation with Nextgov. As rapid advances in quantum technology push current encryption protocols closer to their expiration date, she said it’s time for the government to start adapting its digital security methods for the future.
In 2015, the NSA announced it would b ..
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