04 Apr Harden Your Cybersecurity Defenses Against Y2Q

What will happen when hackers obtain quantum computers

– James Nguyen

Ottawa, Canada – Apr. 4, 2022

No matter how much we improve our data and communications security, bad actors and rogue nation states will always find ways to circumvent it. The cybersecurity industry is changing all the time, so if you want to be one step ahead of these folks, you’ll need to stay alert.

Quantum computing and subsequent quantum attacks are a transformative threat to cybersecurity as we know it. Quantum computers will be able to attack pretty much any encryption algorithm in use today. And while quantum computing capability has yet to fully mature, businesses need to start preparing for Y2Q and the quantum threat immediately:

• Quantum is closer than you may imagine. Research into quantum computing accelerates by the day, with companies like Google and IBM frequently conquering new performance milestones with quantum machines.

• Hackers are stealing data now to crack it later. If you are breached and your data is stolen, that data may be unreadable today, but this will change once hackers obtain quantum computers.

These two trends should form the basis of your cybersecurity efforts in the foreseeable future.

More precisely, you should:

• Start using quantum-safe algorithms in your cybersecurity infrastructure
• Prevent data loss and theft to protect yourself from “steal now, crack later.”

To help bring these points to life, here are three things you should consider to protect your data today and in the future.

1. Employee Devices Are Major Weak Links

One of the biggest cybersecurity challenges today is the wide range of devices in our corporate networks. With BYOD (“bring your own device”) policies being the norm, cybersecurity must extend well beyond on-premise hardware and data.

Employees’ personal devices are huge weak links in enterprise cybersecurity. This is partially because protecting both on-premise and remote devices can be extremely challenging. Without protection, employee devices can serve as an easy entryway to your corporate network. SaaS Authentication company Okta recently experienced this when hacking group Lapsus$ compromised an engineer’s laptop and gained access to 2.5 percent of their customer base.

SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is one approach to addressing this issue efficiently. SASE is a cybersecurity approach that combines networking and cybersecurity measures to deliver protection to remote devices through the cloud. In the “work from home” realities of today, measures like SASE are one of the ways to protect your business data on remote devices.

2. Cryptographic Agility is the Basis for Long-Term Protection

Cryptographic agility refers to the ability of a system to rapidly switch from old protection techniques and policies to new ones. Crypto agility should be the foundational characteristic of your network and application security approach.

The most common secure communications technology used on the internet today, Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 (and the slightly older but more prevalent TLS 1.2) already supports dynamic negotiation of cryptographic suites between client and server (eg. browser and website). However, many implementations merely “set it and forget it” missing out on a straightforward mechanism to enable the desired agility. 

Establishing cryptographic policies and deploying ultra-modern data protection measures is a great start for long-lasting cybersecurity. However, if you want to promptly adapt to the new tools and tricks that hackers constantly come up with, you should continue to strive to keep your cybersecurity measures and policies up-to-date at all times.

3. Combine Legacy and Quantum-Safe Protection Measures

One way to practice cryptographic agility is to combine legacy and quantum-ready cryptographic capabilities.

The majority of Public Cloud Platforms (AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) and SaaS Platforms (Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle) support the concept of Bring Your Own Key (BYOK). Using a Quantum Random Number as the basis of your organization’s cryptographic keys immediately strengthens those deployments.

At the moment, quantum-safe algorithms are still in development, and regulatory bodies like the United States NIST haven’t come up with standards for quantum cybersecurity. However, you can still incorporate quantum technology into your infrastructure to future-proof your defenses.

For example, you could use any of the candidate algorithms that are undergoing standardization. Alternatively, you can leverage proprietary technology, like Quantropi’s QiSpace™ solution, to seamlessly transition your existing infrastructure to quantum security.

Future-Proof Your Data with Quantropi

Quantropi positions proactive cybersecurity as one of its core values and specializes in quantum-ready data protection. Although quantum computers might not become commonplace for a few years yet, we believe that businesses should start preparing for Y2Q and quantum threats. Learn more about QiSpace™ and Quantropi’s FREE 60-Day Trial here.

– James Nguyen is co-founder and CEO at Quantropi.

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