Cyberattacks on the rise, businesses are already planning for catastrophic quantum intrusions.

LONDON: Arqit, a little-known British firm, is discreetly preparing corporations and governments for what it views as the next major danger to their cyber defences: quantum computers.

Although it is still a very new field of study, several in the IT sector, including Google, Microsoft, and IBM, predict quantum computing will become a reality within the next decade. This might be worrisome for enterprises’ cybersecurity.

According to David Williams, co-founder and chairman of Arqit, quantum computers will be several million times quicker than conventional computers and will be capable of breaking into one of the most extensively used cryptographic techniques.

Customers of Arqit, which is aiming to go public through a combination with a blank-check firm, include BT, Sumitomo Corporation, the British government, and the European Space Agency. Some of its members formerly worked for the United Kingdom’s intelligence organisation, GCHQ. The company only recently emerged from “stealth mode,” a brief condition of secrecy, and its stock market debut couldn’t come at a better moment.

Quantum computing strives to apply the concepts of quantum physics to computers. Quantum physics is a branch of study that strives to describe the universe at the level of atoms and subatomic particles.

Unlike today’s computers, which utilise ones and zeroes to store information, a quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits, which can consist of a mix of ones and zeroes at the same time, a phenomenon known in the field as superposition. These qubits can also be joined together by a process known as entanglement.