Y2Q - the quantum threat to our data & communications

An in depth report on the threat of Y2Q

Keywords: Y2Q, PQC, QKD

Client access link: https://my.global-qi.com/y2q/3

The first public mentions of Y2Q emerged as early as 2016, especially in a noted article by Alex Hutchinson entitled “Hacking, Cryptography, and the Countdown to Quantum Computing” in the New Yorker.

As the author explains “The ‘Y2Q’ handle makes explicit the parallels between the quantum threat and the Y2K bug, which, at the turn of the millennium, was supposed to make the world’s computers think it was 1900 again, bringing civilization to a grinding halt.

In the popular imagination, Y2K has become a punchline, a prophecy of doom unfulfilled, like the Maya calendar turned out to be in 2012.” This also coincides with the first known estimation on the potential timeline of Y2Q by “Michele Mosca, a professor at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing and the co-host of the workshop, pegged the odds of reaching Y2Q by 2026 at one in seven, rising to one in two by 2031.”

Six years later those estimates are surprisingly aligned with many of today’s expert opinions. If in only 9 short years there indeed is a 50% chance of a Y2Q like event occurring, any critical infrastructure provider, government facility, defense provider, financial services provider and even simple end-user should be in panic by now as enterprise implementation of a potential defense against it is a tall order in such a short time frame.

But, we aren’t.