Inside the race to keep secrets safe from the quantum computing revolution
Start-ups are taking part in a global competition to upgrade encryption to fend off the quantum computing threat
28 February 2021 • 12:00pm
The algorithms that have kept state secrets safe and confidential messages private since the 1970s are about to be broken.
Security experts disagree on how long it will take - some say within five years, others a decade. But they’re all convinced that it’s just a matter of years until it happens.
Encryption will be broken not by a group of skilled hackers or via industrial espionage, but through breakthroughs in quantum computing, allowing governments to perform calculations that can untangle the complex mathematics that have kept our privacy for decades.