A quantum security leap?

Chris King, director of product marketing at Palo Alto Networks, sums it up when he states "there is no such thing as an unbreakable system" and while the encryption of data in transit may be theoretically unbreakable, when the system uses applications to store and transmit data weakness is introduced and can be exploited.

"At the end of the day, it interfaces with humans easily the weakest link in the system" King points out. Rolf von Roessing, international vice president of ISACA, insists that "unbreakable is relative" and while the mechanism of quantum crypto will likely be difficult to break the end points are still vulnerable so "traditional forms of attack such as sniffing, phishing and social engineering are still available" not to mention those researchers who warn that an imperfect implementation can open up new avenues of compromise.

Too late, we've mentioned it and, sadly, researchers have exploited it already. Such is the nature of the quantum physics world.

Davey Winder

Davey is a three-decade veteran technology journalist specialising in cybersecurity and privacy matters and has been a Contributing Editor at PC Pro magazine since the first issue was published in 1994. He's also a Senior Contributor at Forbes, and co-founder of the Forbes Straight Talking Cyber video project that won the ‘Most Educational Content’ category at the 2021 European Cybersecurity Blogger Awards.

Davey has also picked up many other awards over the years, including the Security Serious ‘Cyber Writer of the Year’ title in 2020. As well as being the only three-time winner of the BT Security Journalist of the Year award (2006, 2008, 2010) Davey was also named BT Technology Journalist of the Year in 1996 for a forward-looking feature in PC Pro Magazine called ‘Threats to the Internet.’ In 2011 he was honoured with the Enigma Award for a lifetime contribution to IT security journalism which, thankfully, didn’t end his ongoing contributions - or his life for that matter.

You can follow Davey on Twitter @happygeek, or email him at davey@happygeek.com.