Quantum Computing & Cybersecurity: Insights from Kyle Laurie & Tanya Janca

hi I'm Tanya Jenka head of community at srep here at bides Vancouver Island with my friend Kyle Lori did you know he does Quantum could you what is quantum Quantum is uh tiny things that make up everything and so scientists figured out we can store information and do calculations it's doing cool things with the world and like being able to do optimizations and calculate the traveling salesman problem now there's some really good things it can do like solving hard problems even supercomputers can't the problem is on the cyber security side Peter Shore came up with an algorithm in 1994 that makes our existing encryption broken RSA prime factorization it's got holes in it now so we have to really follow the nist

standards that were just released to change all of our cryptographic algorithms now I start a little job that's a really big job and so we're looking at how we can provide tools and teach people like you know you've got to go and look at all your stuff and it's not just lifting up all of the some of the tools like you got to look in all the corners and be able to figure out how to improve across your organization so Quantum algorithms Institute Q a.ca is here to be able to help large organizations small organizations through training through tools and and awareness to get to the state where everyone is postquantum ready there's a an attack out there called Harvest and

decrypt someone you know maybe a large State actor will grab all of your information for and store it stick it in a vault somewhere for you know 5 10 years and in that time if your information is still sensitive they're able to just open it up and take a look at it using a quantum computer to decrypt the information that there that's a problem oh my gosh okay so now that you've scared my pants off Kyle that has a lot of information okay so I feel almost overwhelmed if I wanted to start at the beginning learning about Quantum do you have any suggestions for me well QA we do have some intros just some basics of you know

the 101 using that you can get some pieces you need we're working with Partners to be able to help on the optimization side on Discovery like there's drug Discovery there's some really cool applications for quantum computers when you're going into the cyber security side Canada does have the quantum Safe program and we're working with that and other organizations to help businesses become Quantum safe know what you've got know what your inventory is prioritize as you're going through that to be able to you know understand where your data is that's what's important important so then protect that those crown jewels that we we we need to have and make sure that you're ready for that you know there's data loss all the

time we see that we you know in cyber security we see breaches we know that almost every day you're just waiting for the news don't be that one and if your data has life beyond you know a couple years make sure that you're using the right encryption algorithms Okay so that's a lot so Canada is actively trying to get ready for kind of a postquantum world do we have any idea how long it's going to take us to get ready and be like successful in defending I realize we're not successful at defending right now so this is a trick question that is a really trick question and it's a hard one because looking at that lifetime of

your data so if you have want your data to be safe for you know 5 years then you have to have your data encrypted using secure algorithms five years before a breach the estimation is that maybe in 2027 there will be a quantum computer capable of breaking the encryption it's 2024 now so that's three years out we should have encrypted our data two years ago there we go so if you know that is for like there's going to be one or two quantum computers that are out there that can do that publicly and say that we have our data in in a 10-year lifetime um to see a mainstream quantum computer even 2030 is probably the date we're looking at so

really start working with Quantum safe algorithms now standards they're out there so there's quite a few projects working on you know the tools we use all the time op SSL op SSH engine X Apache to be able to make those Quantum safe using the new mlkm ml DSA algorithms you can work with those in testing not production ready quite yet okay but it it'll be coming very soon okay so that's amazing I want to switch gears just briefly so I heard that you might be in charge of a meetup on Vancouver Island what is it and how can people attend we're having a lot of fun and you know it's such a vibrant community in Tech in

this island like there are so many smart people we're meeting up in Duncan at open hack CCH and Valley every month having a blast come hang out with me Kyle Ryan Sonia and so many other people who are part of our local community last month we played cards against ABAC really good time you can drink beer but you don't have to and there's food and basically there's friends and so me and Ryan me sorry me and Kyle want to invite of you to come to cin Valley open hack once a month here on Vancouver Island there's also Victoria open hack if you like want to stay more Central but we won't be there come on up to cin Valley

thank you so much Kyle absolutely you should follow him on LinkedIn thank you see you later