We reside in a digital world that’s closely dependent on the web, and but, lots of our cybersecurity strategies are fairly juvenile. QNu Labs, pronounced as Q-New, is India’s solely quantum-tech cybersecurity firm, and it’s making an attempt to steer the quantum mission for India. Sunil Gupta, Co-founder & CEO of QNu Labs, explains the necessity to reimagine cybersecurity in an interview with EFY.
Q. Why do you’re feeling there’s a must reimagine cybersecurity?
A. Let me take you again to 2016. About five-and-a-half years in the past, there have been a number of issues taking place in India and likewise globally. In 2016, demonetisation occurred and India determined to go digital—from a money based mostly financial system to a cashless financial system. PhonePe, UPI, and so forth got here up. All people within the nation has began doing issues utilizing digital platforms. India is changing into a really digital financial system, aside from just a few money based mostly actions. Healthcare, social safety, and banking, all occur digitally.
To begin with, as we speak’s encryption relies upon a fancy mathematical drawback that may’t be damaged by present classical computer systems and supercomputers however hackers will be capable to break the encryption utilizing scalable quantum computer systems. The second factor is that encryption keys as we speak are generated occasionally. They need to be generated extra steadily and ought to be random. You’ll be shocked to seek out out that giant enterprises sometimes have about 85,000 keys. Most of those keys don’t change for 2 to a few years! Now think about if a secret’s stolen by someone and the individual decrypts the info and steals it.
At any time when a breach occurs, individuals are anxious about knowledge loss, however they have no idea that additionally they lose the encryption keys. When folks hack right into a server, they not solely take away the info but additionally the encryption keys—in order that they’ll steal knowledge sooner or later as properly.
We lock the doorways of our homes utilizing keys. We really feel that the bottom line is with us and with our household and no one else has it. Simply think about if anybody has duplicated your key bodily. It’s the identical premise right here. The concept is, keys ought to be modified steadily. There ought to be no correlation between your previous keys and your future keys, and these ought to be generated in actual time. Lastly, if enterprises are going to retailer round 85,000 keys, how are they going to be managed? There ought to be a correct key administration system.
Q. May you elaborate on a number of the widespread functions or providers that we use which can be really a safety risk?
A. In lots of chat functions, your messages are saved within the firm’s server. That’s the way you’re capable of obtain your messages once more if you purchase a brand new telephone. However so long as messages are on the server, it turns into a safety challenge.
One other one is VPN (digital non-public community). When folks work remotely, they use VPNs. However plenty of these VPNs are extremely safe and have backdoors which can be designed to steal confidential knowledge. In case you are utilizing a Chinese language VPN to attach from your house to your workplace, the visitors can be routed to Chinese language servers—that’s an enormous safety danger.
The information on our telephones and laptops can also be instance. Lots of people preserve their private knowledge on their laptops unencrypted. If somebody hacks it, it’s gone! QNu Labs offers providers to fight all three of those points utilizing quantum know-how.
Q. What’s hardware-based random quantity technology and the way is it totally different from the software program counterpart?
A. Random quantity mills have to be actually random, proper? Software program based mostly random quantity mills rely upon inputs. For those who change the enter, the output may also change. These pseudo-random numbers are very predictable as a result of software program tends to repeat numbers and there are observable patterns. Utilizing these patterns, hackers can work out what the subsequent random quantity can be. They’re good by way of their throughput, however they’re not good by way of their randomness.
Alternatively, {hardware} random quantity mills are good by way of their randomness, however not good by way of their entropy; you want a really excessive entropy. In our answer Tropos (quantum random quantity generator), what we have now achieved is, we used the quantum phenomenon.
All of the pure phenomena like wind, mild, and sound are vector portions; they’ve each particle and wave properties. We use a lightweight supply, a laser, that generates a lightweight beam. That mild beam creates photons. As a result of photons have a wave nature in addition to particulate nature, we put them right into a quantum state (superposition state). When this occurs, they turn out to be inherently random. Even when we generate billions of random numbers, every can be totally different due to the character of sunshine. As a result of there isn’t any human intervention, and every thing is pure, we’re ready to try this at excessive entropy and really excessive throughput.
Q. Why has QNu Labs chosen India for his or her Quantum Mission?
A. India is a digital financial system with so many individuals utilizing digital options. Indian philosophy and scriptures have been speaking about quantum, and it’s the foundation of the Indian Vedanta system. That is the explanation why—though we have now companions all the world over—we imagine that India is the fitting place to construct quantum cryptography know-how and deploy it.
We’re very proud that we have now put India on the quantum map of the world. We’re most likely the second or third largest on this planet doing this. We’re making an attempt to place India in a core place for this know-how. Our complete thought is that everyone on this planet would come to us for such a answer.
We’re making an attempt to steer the quantum mission for India. Individuals typically speak about this solely in academia and analysis. However for folks to profit from this, you must construct services. We’re making quantum cybersecurity a actuality and bringing it into the mainstream.
In all Sci-Fi motion pictures, everyone seems to be anxious about machines defeating people. The protagonist has to return in time and alter one thing to save lots of the world. That’s our premise—we’re serving to enterprises undertake quantum tech as we speak in order that sooner or later, quantum computer systems and robots geared up with quantum computing can’t defeat people.
