What is Quantum Encryption? How does it work?

I always see stuff encrypting for Quantum Computing, but I can’t seem to find a summary of how they do it, or where I find resources to explain it to me. I know about the basics of normal encryption, but this confuses me.

Unfortunately the proper explanation involves some high level mathematics .. and I definitely don’t understand that myself either.

In short: Quantum computers are really good at calculating some things that take traditional computers much longer. This can be an issue for some encryption algorithms.
There are ways to change these algorithms so that Quantum computers are losing their speed advantage and that’s what post-quantum cryptography is all about.

1 Like

Thank you for this, I will look into it. Just skimmmng over it, it does seem that I need to understand some high level mathematics. I already am up there so it should not be too hard.

Thank you for your help!

its actually a valid question. Encrypting for quantum computing is a wider term and could mean lot of different things.
PQC usually refers to encrption algorithms which are resistant against quantum computer cracking. But these may involve different algorithms to achieve it.
We can atleast have a surface level understanding about pqc without going into the detail mathematics of each algorithm.

For the convenience of myself and eveyone else i am not going to list all algorithms here but go to your favourite llm and ask for “various pqc algorithms by NIST and the applications which use these algorithms”
you will see various algorithms and what applications use them in sophisticated way.

Though i beileve that these are not the only algorithms under pqc which are developed as its a growing field and we don’t know yet the exact extent of how powerful a quantum computer could be in reality.
So to note that an application claiming to be quantum safe is just a bet on using the right algorithm for protecting against quantum threats but are not a guarantee that they would safeguard against all types of attacks in future.

2 Likes