Workshop on Cybersecurity in a Post-Quantum World

Presentations are linked within the agenda.

Invited Speakers

Paul Lopata Laboratory for Physical Sciences
Topic: Experimental Quantum Computing Progress in a Pre-Quantum World

ABSTRACT: The anticipated promise of the field of quantum computing depends upon two major theoretical results: the construction of high-quality quantum algorithms; and the development of reasonable methods for noise-reduction through fault-tolerant operations. In addition, the continued success of the field relies on steady progress in experimental demonstrations of quantum computing primatives. This talk provides a survey of recent experimental successes, and places these results in the context of what needs to be achieved to someday experimentally demonstrate fault-tolerant operations and demonstrate quantum algorithms. 

David McGrew Cisco Systems
Topic: Living with Post-Quantum Cryptography

ABSTRACT: This presentation outlines a systems engineering approach that makes it easier to live with postquantum cryptography. There are asymmetric encryption and signature algorithms that will be secure even in the postquantum era, but they bring baggage: big signatures and ciphertexts, really big keys, costly key generation, and stateful signing. Adopting these algorithms into standard protocols in a straightforward way is possible, but is suboptimal. A better approach is to consider the overall security goals and adapt protocols to make good use of the capabilities of postquantum algorithms. This approach brings an important benefit: it eliminates the pressure to trade off security against systems constraints like computation and communication cost.

Michele Mosca Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Canada
Topic: Cybersecurity in a quantum world: will we be ready? 

ABSTRACT: Emerging quantum technologies will break currently deployed public-key cryptography which is one of the pillars of modern-day cybersecurity. Thus we need to migrate our systems and practices to ones that are quantum-safe before large-scale quantum computers are built. For systems protecting medium-term or long-term secrets, this migration should occur sufficiently many years before the current quantum-vulnerable tools are broken.

Impressive progress in developing the building blocks of a fault-tolerant scalable quantum computer indicates that the prospect of a large-scale quantum computer is a medium-term threat.

There are viable options for quantum-proofing our cryptographic infrastructure, but the road ahead is neither easy nor fast. A broad community of stakeholders will need to work together to quantum-proof our cyber systems within the required timeframe.  

Bart Preneel Electrical Engineering Department, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Topic: Public Key Cryptography: the next 4 decades