Quantum computing was named a breakout technology in 2017 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It showed up again on the list for 2020. Does that mean quantum computing is ready for prime time? Possibly. That is good news for the world, but the problem is few know what a quantum computer actually doesand investors dont know what quantum computing means for their portfolio.

Where to start? Microsoft (ticker: MSFT) is a large quantum player. And looking at its quantum business can help frame the issue for investorsand anyone else.

Its helpful to start a few steps back from Microsofts quantum aspirations.

Many people have heard of the quantum realm, thanks in large part to Walt Disneys (DIS) Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Avengers, after all, defeated Thanos in Avengers: Endgamethe highest-grossing film of all timewith the help of quantum tunnels. And the Guardians of the Galaxy navigated a quantum asteroid field in their latest stand-alone film.

In the quantum asteroid field, rocks popped in and out of existence. The idea being that in the quantum realm, almost anything is possible. Quantum has become an analogy for weird, counterintuitive outcomes.

Quantum physics does indeed dictate a bunch of weird things, including particlesnot the size of asteroidspopping in and out of existence.

Physicist Richard Feynman said once that all people need to know about quantum physics is the double-slit experiment.

In the experiment, a single electronwhich is a negatively-charged subatomic particlepasses through both slits at the same time. Very weird. But that is because particles have wavelike properties. A wave of water would hit both slits.

So an electron behaves like a wave. OK. But heres the thing, if someone watches the experiment unfoldputting a detector in front of the slitsthe electron stops acting like water. It goes back to being a particle. Weird.

That, curiously, has some benefits for a computer. In a traditional computer, a bitthe basic unit of computing powercan have a value of one or zero. A quantum bit, more commonly called a qubit, is the basic unit of quantum computing. It can have a value of one or zero or anything in betweenat the same time.

There are other things qubits can do, but multiple, simultaneous values makes quantum computers faster. A 64-bit computer can have roughly 18 quintillion (18 with 18 zeros) values. If a computer can do 2 billion values per second, it will take roughly 300 years to go through all potential values.

A 64-bit quantum computer can have, in theory, all 18 quintillion values at once. Go figure.

MIT put quantum computing back on its technology list in 2020 because a quantum computer with 53 qubits built by Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) did a calculation, in about three minutes, that would have taken a traditional computer 10,000 years.

Quantum supremacy was demonstrated. Great. So when will consumers be buying a quantum desktop, and when will investors be bidding up Alphabet stock on exploding quantum sales?

Not yet.

Qubits are not reliable yet. There is noise, Stephen Jordan, Microsoft quantum principal researcher, told Barrons. People are still working out the hardware. There are, for instance, superconducting qubits, trapped-ion qubits, and topological qubits.

Picking between qubits isnt like beta or VHS, or a Mac versus a PC. With todays computers underlying hardware is the same and 100% reliable, adds Jordan.

The industry is still working out the hardware. To reduce the noise, usually, you take qubits and string a bunch together to make a computing qubit, explains Helmut Katzgraber, Microsoft quantum principal research manager.

Microsoft, of course, is known for software. Maybe that means what the quantum computing industry needs is quantum Intel (INTC), pumping out the quantum equivalent of silicon chips with 1 billion transistors on them. (A transistor can store a bita one or zeroas information.)

For Katzgraber, the qubit hardware industry will be like FPGA, short for field programmable gate arrays, which are integrated circuits that can be configured into ASIC, short for application-specific integrated circuits.

Xilinx (XLNX) makes FPGAs. They get their supply from businesses like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), and Taiwan Semi gets silicon from a company like Lam Research (LCRX).

There is now a quantum value chain like that. Honeywell International (HON) can make trapped-ion qubits. That is probably as close as investors have to a quantum supplier at this point.

Hardware doesnt have to come before software and applications though.

We have gone through computer creation before, says Katzgraber. We are doing the whole stackthe software to the qubitsall at once.

That speeds development, but doesnt mean there will be a quantum smartphone soonor sooner than it took to go from mainframe to desktop, to laptop to iPhone. Quantum computing will probably look a little different. These [systems] will live in data centers in the cloud, adds Jordan.

Along with hardware comes apps. And a killer quantum app will help elevate the technology from MITs tech review to the nightly news. There are areas where the existing tech is having an impact. Julie Love, Microsoft quantum applications team leader, tells Barrons about several problems being addressed now from traffic light optimization to industrial catalyst for chemical production.

For now, big tech is big quantum. Google, Microsoft, IBM (IBM), and Amazon.com (AMZN) have quantum aspirations. Honeywell has its toes in quantum waters too. Its tough to buy any of those stock as a quantum investment yet.

Superconductor makers dont talk about quantum computing much in filings either. And superconducting is only a $2 billion industry at the moment.

Quantum computing remains a watch item for investorsalbeit an interesting one.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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Quantum Computing Explained for Investors - Barron's

MIT researchers have introduced a quantum computing architecture thatcan perform low-error quantum computations while also rapidly sharing quantum information between processors. The work represents a key advance toward a complete quantum computing platform.

Previous to this discovery, small-scale quantum processors have successfully performed tasks at a rate exponentially faster than that of classical computers. However, it has been difficult to controllably communicate quantum information between distant parts of a processor. In classical computers, wired interconnects are used to route information back and forth throughout a processor during the course of a computation. In a quantum computer, however, the information itself is quantum mechanical and fragile, requiring fundamentally new strategies to simultaneously process and communicate quantum information on a chip.

One of the main challenges in scaling quantum computers is to enable quantum bits to interact with each other when they are not co-located, says William Oliver, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, MIT Lincoln Laboratory fellow, and associate director of the Research Laboratory for Electronics. For example, nearest-neighbor qubits can easily interact, but how do I make quantum interconnects that connect qubits at distant locations?

The answer lies in going beyond conventional light-matter interactions.

While natural atoms are small and point-like with respect to the wavelength of light they interact with, in a paper published today in the journal Nature, the researchers show that this need not be the case for superconducting artificial atoms. Instead, they have constructed giant atoms from superconducting quantum bits, or qubits, connected in a tunable configuration to a microwave transmission line, or waveguide.

This allows the researchers to adjust the strength of the qubit-waveguide interactions so the fragile qubits can be protected from decoherence, or a kind of natural decay that would otherwise be hastened by the waveguide, while they perform high-fidelity operations. Once those computations are carried out, the strength of the qubit-waveguide couplings is readjusted, and the qubits are able to release quantum data into the waveguide in the form of photons, or light particles.

Coupling a qubit to a waveguide is usually quite bad for qubit operations, since doing so can significantly reduce the lifetime of the qubit, says Bharath Kannan, MIT graduate fellow and first author of the paper. However, the waveguide is necessary in order to release and route quantum information throughout the processor. Here, weve shown that its possible to preserve the coherence of the qubit even though its strongly coupled to a waveguide. We then have the ability to determine when we want to release the information stored in the qubit. We have shown how giant atoms can be used to turn the interaction with the waveguide on and off.

The system realized by the researchers represents a new regime of light-matter interactions, the researchers say. Unlike models that treat atoms as point-like objects smaller than the wavelength of the light they interact with, the superconducting qubits, or artificial atoms, are essentially large electrical circuits. When coupled with the waveguide, they create a structure as large as the wavelength of the microwave light with which they interact.

The giant atom emits its information as microwave photons at multiple locations along the waveguide, such that the photons interfere with each other. This process can be tuned to complete destructive interference, meaning the information in the qubit is protected. Furthermore, even when no photons are actually released from the giant atom, multiple qubits along the waveguide are still able to interact with each other to perform operations. Throughout, the qubits remain strongly coupled to the waveguide, but because of this type of quantum interference, they can remain unaffected by it and be protected from decoherence, while single- and two-qubit operations are performed with high fidelity.

We use the quantum interference effects enabled by the giant atoms to prevent the qubits from emitting their quantum information to the waveguide until we need it. says Oliver.

This allows us to experimentally probe a novel regime of physics that is difficult to access with natural atoms, says Kannan. The effects of the giant atom are extremely clean and easy to observe and understand.

The work appears to have much potential for further research, Kannan adds.

I think one of the surprises is actually the relative ease by which superconducting qubits are able to enter this giant atom regime. he says. The tricks we employed are relatively simple and, as such, one can imagine using this for further applications without a great deal of additional overhead.

Andreas Wallraff, professor of solid-state physics at ETH Zurich, says the research "investigates a piece of quantum physics that is hard or even impossible to fathom for microscopic objects such as electrons or atoms, but that can be studied with macroscopic engineered superconducting quantum circuits. With these circuits, using a clever trick, they are able both to protect their giant atom from decay and simultaneously to allow for coupling two of them coherently. This is very nice work exploring waveguide quantum electrodynamics."

The coherence time of the qubits incorporated into the giant atoms, meaning the time they remained in a quantum state, was approximately 30 microseconds, nearly the same for qubits not coupled to a waveguide, which have a range of between 10 and 100 microseconds, according to the researchers.

Additionally, the research demonstrates two-qubit entangling operations with 94 percent fidelity. This represents the first time researchers have quoted a two-qubit fidelity for qubits that were strongly coupled to a waveguide, because the fidelity of such operations using conventional small atoms is often low in such an architecture. With more calibration, operation tune-up procedures and optimized hardware design, Kannan says, the fidelity can be further improved.

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Giant atoms enable quantum processing and communication in one - MIT News

PQShield, a spin-out from the UK's Oxford University, is developing advanced cryptographic solutions for hardware, software and communications to protect businesses' data from the quantum threat.

The development of quantum computers poses a cybersecurity problem such as the IT industry has never seen before. All stored data currently deemed secure by modern standards whether that's health records, financial data, customer databases and even critical government infrastructure could, in theory, be cracked by quantum computers, which are capable of effectively short circuiting the encryption we've used to protect that data until now.

Efforts to protect our data from the quantum threat are underway, though whether the issue is being looked at with the urgency it deserves is up for debate. PQShield, a post-quantum cryptography startup spun out of Oxford University, perceives a disconnect between the scale of the threat and the current cyber-readiness of most businesses in 2020, which it is now trying to address.

SEE: Quantum computing: Myths v. Realities (TechRepublic)

"The scale of the quantum attack is just too big to imagine," Dr. Ali Kaafarani, research fellow at Oxford's Mathematical Institute and founder of PQShield, tells TechRepublic.

"The most important part of what we're doing is to educate the market."

Kaafarani is a former engineer at Hewlett-Packard Labs and leads a team of 10 full-time quantum cryptographers, from what he estimates to be a worldwide pool of just a hundred or so. The company is busy working on the development of quantum-secure cryptography encryption solutions for hardware, software and communications that will secure information from future risk, yet can be implemented using today's technology.

This comprises a system on chip (SoC) and software development kit that allow companies to create secure messaging applications, protected by a "post-quantum" variant of the Signal cryptographic protocol. Central to PQShield's technology is that it is designed to work with both legacy systems as well as those expected in the years to come, meaning it could offer protection for everything from keyless cars and other connected devices, to data moving to and from cloud servers.

This, Kaafarani explains, is important owing to the fact that post-quantum cryptography cannot be retrospectively implemented meanwhile data encrypted by modern standards remains open to post-quantum threats. "What we're using right now as end-to-end encryption...is secure now, but people can intercept them and steal encrypted data," he says.

"Once they have access to a quantum computer, they can decrypt them, so confidentiality is threatened in retrospect, because whatever is considered confidential now can be decrypted later on."

Kaafarani also perceives an issue with the current attitudes to remediating cyberattacks, which he likens to applying a band-aid to a repeating problem.

SEE: SSL Certificate Best Practices Policy (TechRepublic Premium)

"That's why we started PQShield to fill in this gap, to lead the way to a smooth and secure transition to the quantum era. There is a real opportunity here to get things right from the beginning."

The startup recently completed a 5.5m funding round led by VC Firm Kindred Capital and has now secured German engineering company Bosch as its first OEM customer. While the exact details of the deal are still under wraps, Kaafarani says the deal is indicative of the threats businesses are beginning to identify as the age of quantum computing approaches.

"Their hardware may be built to last, but right now, their security isn't," he says.

"If you're designing a car that's going to go on the roads in the next three years, if you're doing security by design, you should be thinking of the next security standards: not the standards that are valid now, but the standards that will be valid in the next five, 10, 15 years," he says.

"Future-proofing is an imperative, just as it is for the banks and agencies that hold so much of our sensitive data."

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The future of encryption: Getting ready for the quantum computer attack - TechRepublic

The United States (US) Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled a report that lays out a blueprint strategy for the development of a national quantum internet, an Internet based on quantum computing technology that when implemented will be virtually unhacabled.

Notably, a system that communicates using quantum mechanics represents one of the most important technological frontiers of the 21st century. One of the distinctive feature of quantum transmissions is that they are exceedingly difficult to eavesdrop (secretly or stealthily listening to the private conversation/communications) on as information passes between locations, making it (Quantum Internet) a virtually unhackable networks.

In February of this year, scientists from DOEs Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, and the University of Chicago created a 52-mile (83-kilometer) quantum loop in the Chicago suburbs, successfully establishing one of the longest land-based quantum networks in the nation. That network will soon be connected to DOEs Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, establishing a three-node, 80-mile testbed.

The U.S. Department of Energy s 17 national laboratories will serve as the backbone of the coming quantum internet, which has initial government funding.

Scientists are also exploring how the quantum internet could expedite the exchange of vast amounts of data. If the components can be combined and scaled, society may be at the cusp of a breakthrough in data communication, according to the report.

Moreover, creating networks of ultra-sensitive quantum sensors could allow engineers to better monitor and predict earthquakesa longtime and elusive goalor to search for underground deposits of oil, gas, or minerals. Such sensors could also have applications in health care and imaging.

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The US Is Building Quantum Internet That'll Be Virtually Unhackable - IndianWeb2.com

Now that weve passed the midpoint in 2020, one thing in the cybersecurity world has become crystal clear: The need for better security within public clouds must be addressed by enterprises once and for all, and that entails cryptography.

No question, enterprises large and small have realized the benefits of rapidly deployable, reasonably priced and extremely scalable public computing infrastructure. According to Forbes, the global cloud computing market will reach $411 billion this year.

But what about the security? Is it up to snuff?

Not really, even though some public cloud purveyors offer some encryption as an option and sometimes by default. This step is hardly foolproof, however, and that should come as no surprise. After all, data in the cloud is stored with a third-party provider and accessed over the internet. This means visibility and control over that dataincluding its securityis limited.

Fact is, cloud service providers treat cloud security risks as a shared responsibility. The good news is that some cloud companies allow clients to encrypt their data before sending it to the cloud, and its becoming increasingly clear that thisor possibly the additional option of adopting a few other proven, state-of-the-art fixes for cloud securityis the preferred route for truly security-conscious enterprises.

That enhanced data encryption in the cloud makes sense began circulating roughly two-and-a-half years ago, when technology and cloud giant Accenture confirmed that it inadvertently left a gigantic store of private data access across four unsecured cloud servers. This exposed highly sensitive passwords and secret decryption keys that could have inflicted considerable damage on the company and its customers.

Since then, misconfigured cloud settings have caused multiple incidents of data exposures in the Amazon Web Services cloud. In addition, a misconfiguration error in Microsofts Azure cloud exposed 250 million technical support accounts. Meanwhile, MVISION Cloud, a unit of McAfee, analyzed the encryption controls offered by more than 12,000 providers and found yet more shortcomings. While 82percent of cloud service providers encrypt data in transit between the user and the cloud service, not even 10percent of cloud providers encrypt data once its stored, MVISION found.

According to CloudPassage, a software-as-a-service purveyor that provides security for private, public and hybrid clouds, one of the worst mistakes made by public cloud companies is having easily hacked administrative credentialsessentially the keys to the kingdom. As it turns out, attackers can execute a breach with a badly configured set of privileged credentialsa common occurrence, unfortunately, when a cloud company cuts corners in a rush to market.

Other mistakes among public crowd companies include exposed data assets, weak network access control and poor event logging, which impedes efforts to detect, contain and analyze compromises in the cloud.

On the bright side, there are companies today that help enterprises adopt cloud encryption. Oneborn out of research done at MITis cybersecurity company PreVeil, whose end-to-end encryption could redefine cloud-based cybersecurity in a way that doesnt interfere with workflows while still enabling popular cloud-based machine-learning applications.

Another company with a different approach to the same end goal is Zscaler, which offers a Secure Web Gateway in the cloud via software-as-a service. No hardware is required. Zscaler decentralizes cybersecurity protection, allowing data to flow back and forth from a public cloud rather than redirecting it to clients own physical data centers.

Another form of cryptography enhances the breadth of the science by offering fresh analytical capabilities as well as securityhomomorphic encryption (HE). HE is attracting more attention from select technology companies such as IBM, Microsoft and Google, and startups such as Enveil, and slowly growing. HE makes it possible to analyze or manipulate encrypted data without revealing the data to anyone, offering huge potential in areas with sensitive personal data such as in financial services or healthcareareas in which the privacy of a person is paramount.

The biggest barrier to widespread adoption of HE is that it is still very slow and so not yet practical for many applications. Nonetheless, company researchers are working diligently to speed up the process by decreasing the required computational overhead.

Microsoft, for example, has created SEAL, a set of encryption libraries that allow computations to be performed directly on encrypted data. SEAL is partnering with companies to build end-to-end encrypted data storage and computation services. Googleanother tech giant that has moved into the fieldlast year unveiled an open-source cryptographic tool similarly focused on analyzing data in its encrypted form with only the insights derived from the analysis visible, not the underlying data itself.

An even more futuristic development that cryptography-minded folks should be aware ofalthough in this case, in a blatantly negative senseis quantum computing, based on the principles of quantum physics.

At least a decade away, ultra-fast quantum computers could perform calculations exponentially faster than classic computersin the wrong hands potentially enabling the destruction of the encryption protecting their data. Fortunately, there is also some good news on this front. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is already pushing researchers to analyze potential problems in this post-quantum era. Meanwhile, IBM has already successfully demonstrated a quantum-proof encryption method it developed.

For now, here are six security tips for companies moving to public or even multi-cloud environments and concerned about cryptography and related security disciplines.

+ Get the basics right.Establish a strategy for multi-cloud encryption and the management of cryptography keys before expanding to more advanced crypto technologies.

+ Leverage encryption as part of your broader IT security efforts.Companies that dont have effective data classification and/or a prioritization program in place tend to struggle with data encryption. Data classification policies and tools facilitate the separation of valuable information that may be targeted from less valuable information.

+ Build in crypto agility.This refers to the capacity for an information security system to adopt an alternative to the original encryption method without significant change to system infrastructure. Be ready to replace or retire your deployed cryptography as needed.

+ Ensure that only authorized users can access data.This is critical to prevent tampering by anyone inside or outside the organization. Audit access controls regularly to ensure their validity.

+ Develop robust plans for business continuity and disaster recovery of crypto keys.Inventory keys and cryptographic libraries so you can recover your data alongside your protection mechanisms.

+ Make sure your cryptography is integrated intothe DevSecOps world.Ensure that DevOps teams choose crypto libraries that follow secure coding practices.

In the final analysis, encryption is tough stuff, but extremely important in the world of security. Companies that embrace it and incorporate it properly are taking an additional big step to protect their data and their reputation in a world inundated by embarrassing, hurtful and costly cyber-breaches.

Now that cloud computing has introduced encryption widely, security-minded companies are under growing pressure to keep the ball rolling and help move on to next steps.

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Corporations Must Step Up to the Plate to Enhance the Security of Cloud Computing - Security Boulevard

QMI added another report to its archive, which presents an up-to-date analysis on Global Quantum computing in aerospace and defense Market. The global market is expected to see an increment in its sales and significant growth in its revenue. Some major companies operating in the market are D-Wave Systems Inc, Qxbranch LLC, IBM Corporation, Cambridge Quantum Computing Ltd, 1qb Information Technologies Inc., QC Ware Corp., Magiq Technologies Inc., Station Q-Microsoft Corporation, and Rigetti Computing.

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Market Segmentation:By Component: Hardware Software Services

By Application: Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Quantum Cryptanalysis Quantum Sensing Naval

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By Region:North Americao By Country (US, Canada, Mexico)o By Componento By Application

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Eastern Europe:o By Country (Russia, Turkey, Rest of Eastern Europe)o By Componento By Application

Asia Pacifico By Country (China, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, Rest of Asia Pacific)o By Componento By Application

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Quantum Computing In Aerospace and Defense Market Trend, Future Demand, Analysis by Top Leading Player Qxbranch LLC, IBM Corporation - Market...