Four out of five cybersecurity professionals are worried about the possibility of a sneak attack from an adversary using a quantum computer to disable encryption.

This was one of the conclusions of a global survey of 600 cybersecurity professionals released Tuesday by Dimensional Research for Cambridge Quantum. It is a quantum cryptography company which recently joined Quantinuum.

Duncan Jones, head of quantum cybersecurity at Cambridge Quantum said, “there’s a lot of fear in the cybersecurity community”

“There’s been a steady increase in sophisticated cyberattacks so people are nervous that something is going to arrive unexpectedly that will render existing defenses insufficient,” said Jones

“Cryptographic algorithms are usually formed around math problems,” he explained. “The problems are easy to solve if you know what the key is, but impossible to solve if you don’t know what the key is.”

“Unfortunately, the algorithms that we use today use math problems that quantum computers will be able to solve even if they don’t have the key,” he said.

Quantum computers can process data much faster than most computers today because they use qubits to process data that is not limited to ones and zeros.

Organisations that want to stay ahead of the encryption game need to keep their systems updated. We have to worry about older technologies that were developed when the computing power was not what it is today.

They need to carefully analyse their crypto needs based on expected data persistence and increase encryption accordingly. For the rest of the decade, simple key extensions should be enough to keep your most confidential documents safe.