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Securing digital technology for quantum future
Quantum computers, once a distant prospect, now threaten to breach Indonesia’s most sensitive data far sooner than anticipated. As the nation marches toward Golden Indonesia 2045, the imperative to fortify against quantum risks has never been more urgent.
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IBM researcher Maika Takita works on a quantum computer at the company’s Quantum Lab in Yorktown Heights, New York, the United States, in 2020. (Reuters/IBM)
In less than a decade, quantum computers have undergone one of the most impressive transformations in technological history.
For example, what began as a lone, small quantum device on the cloud running rudimentary experiments has evolved into a breakthrough, utility-scale tool used across industries and organizations to explore the frontiers of challenges in healthcare and life sciences, high energy physics, materials development, optimization and sustainability. Today's progress of utility-scale quantum computers has the industry on the verge of the next computing revolution.
Quantum computers are not just faster, better versions of classical computers that may be able to solve certain niche problems. They offer access to an entirely new branch of computation, built on fundamentally different rules that can access and discover completely new types of results that have never previously been known.
Just recently, the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) announced the Indonesian Quantum Initiative, which aims to help policymakers establish infrastructure and ecosystems in education, research, development and the application of quantum technology in the archipelago.
Many education institutions are also getting ready, with the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) introducing one of the country’s first quantum computers and November 10 Institute of Technology (ITS) launching its ITS Quantum Computing and Information Group, the first Indonesian research community in the field of quantum computer technology.
However, one of the problems quantum computers are getting closer to solving is factoring large numbers, which would make them a “cryptographically relevant” risk to many of today’s security standards.
So, while it’s exciting to watch Indonesia explore how quantum systems can accelerate discovery, many in the public and private sectors remain unprepared for the security risks posed by bad actors gaining access to and taking advantage of a future cryptographically relevant quantum computer’s ability to decrypt critical data and systems.
