Telecom minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on March 27 said the country’s first quantum computing-based telecom network link is now operational in the national capital.
Key points
- The quantum communication link is now operational between Sanchar Bhawan and National Informatics Centre office located in CGO Complex in the national capital. The Union Minister also announced a ₹10 lakh prize money for ethical hackers who can break the encryption of the system.
About Quantum communication
- Quantum communication takes advantage of the laws of quantum physics to protect data.
- These laws allow particles—typically photons of light for transmitting data along optical cables—to take on a state of superposition, which means they can represent multiple combinations of 1 and 0 simultaneously.
- The particles are known as quantum bits, or qubits. The feature of qubits from a cybersecurity perspective is that if a hacker tries to observe them in transit, their super-fragile quantum state “collapses” to either 1 or 0. This means a hacker can’t tamper with the qubits without leaving behind a telltale sign of the activity.
- Some companies have taken advantage of this property to create networks for transmitting highly sensitive data based on a process called quantum key distribution, or QKD. In theory, at least, these networks are ultra-secure.
