The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a US government lab that publishes standards for government agencies to safely use cryptography, has just announced the winners of a six-year-long competition to create quantum-safe algorithms.
Why is that important? Medical, financial, and health records — for sensitive data protection, encryption and authentication is crucial. Today it’s pretty robust, but future quantum computers could change that. It’s been said time and time again that this emerging, powerful technology based on nature’s quantum intricacies could break cryptography, wreaking havoc in our digital lives. Still, this is unlikely to happen.