Breaking the encryption that protects the world's most sensitive data would take a standard computer too many years for it to be a Terminator-style threat. But experts reckon a highly capable quantum computer could do it in minutes. And while no such machine is currently thought to exist, brainiacs in some nation state or other are expected to produce one sometime this decade. That moment, when all systems become as vulnerable as a hatchling turtle, is known as Q Day.

The good news is that brainiacs are also working to fortify systems against such an attack. In August, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a US agency, finalized a set of encryption algorithms for a technology called post-quantum cryptography (PQC). "I think that is a super-important milestone," said Gabriela Styf Sjöman, the managing director of research and network strategy for BT. "Now there are approved standards for organizations to migrate that sensitive data from classic encryption to post-quantum compute."

BT, as the UK's biggest telco, makes its money from transporting calls and data over high-speed fixed and mobile networks. With state-sponsored and private-sector cybercrime on the rise, security has become a focus. That typically involves guarding against more humdrum phishing, distributed denial-of-service and other such attacks. Some 200 million potential cyber-attacks are identified every day on BT's systems, more than 2,000 a second, it revealed in research published this month. Eagle-i, a BT product in commercial deployment, now uses artificial intelligence for predicting, detecting and neutralizing cyber-attacks.

But at Adastral Park, the operator's sprawling R&D facility near Ipswich, BT's experts are also at the forefront of quantum research in the UK. "This is becoming a race because it is going to be so disruptive," Styf Sjöman told Light Reading during an interview on the premises. "China is investing massively and you see there is now collaboration between Russia and China." Built on the site of a World War II airfield that secured Britain against the Luftwaffe, Adastral Park today looks just as critical to the UK's efforts to protect itself against a potential quantum attack with Chinese or Russian origins.

Sorting the PQC from the QKD

NIST's groundbreaking work on PQC has prompted BT to look at where it could introduce the algorithms into its own systems. A slide in public view at Adastral Park says it is now "evaluating the performance and integration issues" of four NIST-standardized methods, besides "planning the PQC migration process" for its internal networks. It is also advising other companies about PQC. But Styf Sjöman thinks moving from old encryption to the quantum-safe variety could take about six years from the outset. "That is why we say to our customers they have to start now," she said. "You have to start migrating that data because you can't afford to wait."

A separate but related initiative involves a technology called quantum key distribution (QKD), well explained in this detailed Light Reading story from earlier this year. If PQC is largely about mathematics, QKD would allow protective cryptographic keys to be sent over the network with quantum safeguards. The photons in use are so ultra-sensitive that any disturbance or eavesdropping can be immediately detected, at which point the key would simply disappear, explained Styf Sjöman. "What we see is that it is practically impossible to break those keys."

Last Friday, BT said it had worked with Japan's Toshiba to link two Equinix data centers with "quantum secure connectivity" based on QKD. Yet standardization appears to be at an earlier stage in this quantum field than it is in PQC. A QKD physics problem noted by Styf Sjöman is the "noise loss" over long distances, which could necessitate the use of quantum repeaters and potentially introduce vulnerabilities. Of course, this also means QKD is partly a hardware fix while PQC looks more purely mathematical. "You don't need to change optical, but you do need to put QKD equipment at the ends, and that is where we are working with Toshiba," said Styf Sjöman.

Talent wars

Her other challenge is attracting and retaining talent. As a telco facing the usual telco problems in a single market, BT would struggle to match a Big Tech company on pay and benefits for experts in hot demand. But the reputation it already enjoys in quantum seems to be helping with both recruitment and retention. "When you're a researcher, you want to be well paid, but you also want to be in a thought-leadership environment because the results of research drive these people," said Styf Sjöman.

She ranks the UK highly on tech expertise, saying it is the fourth-biggest generator of intellectual property in the world, after Switzerland (where numerous pharma companies are headquartered), Sweden and the US. Her frustration is that she feels the "R" (research) is not matched by the "D" (development). In that area, she would like to see a more coherent and supportive government policy that could spur economic growth. "In the whole geopolitical landscape, there is going to be increasingly more scrutiny of where this technology comes from and which nation state is behind it," she said. "The UK is phenomenally well positioned in that space."

For all the talk of security, quantum technologies could have much broader application, and the underlying science is hard for the average person (this correspondent included) to even begin to comprehend. "How can it be that a photon here is connected to a photon over there?" said Styf Sjöman, marveling at the science and dropping the word "teleportation" into her comments. Magicking people from Ipswich to London is probably not what she has in mind, but British Teleportation would be a very quantum update for the company name.