TITLE:
Defining Quantum Advantage for Building a Sustainable MVP to Deliver Quantum Computing Services
AUTHORS:
Fazal Raheman
KEYWORDS:
Cybersecurity, NIST, PQC, Quantum Computers, Quantum Advantage, Quantum Supremacy
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.14 No.6,
June
24,
2024
ABSTRACT: Quantum Computing (QC) is hailed as the future of computers. After Google’s claim of achieving Quantum Supremacy in 2019, several groups challenged the claim. Some QC experts attribute catastrophic risks that unrestrained QC may cause in the future by collapsing the current cryptographic cybersecurity infrastructure. These predictions are relevant only if QC becomes commercially viable and sustainable in the future. No technology can be a one-way ticket to catastrophe, and neither can the definition of superiority of that technology be. If there are catastrophic risks, large-scale QC can never enter the public domain as a minimum viable product (MVP) unless there are safeguards in place. Those safeguards should obviously become an integral part of the definition of its superiority over the legacy systems. NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology) is pursuing the standardization of Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) as that safeguard. However, with all the 82 candidate PQCs failing and companies already offering QC as a service, there’s an urgent need for an alternate strategy to mitigate the impending Q-Day threat and render QC sustainable. Our research proposes a novel encryption-agnostic cybersecurity approach to safeguard QC. It articulates a comprehensive definition of an MVP that can potentially set a sustainable gold standard for defining commercially viable quantum advantage over classical computing.