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Info security

Submitted by kenben on Mon, 2010-02-08 15:50.

February 9, 2010

Defending information security

Barry Sanders (top) and Wolfgang Tittel of the Institute for Quantum
Information Science in the Faculty of
Science.
Information security over the Internet is
ephemeral as defenders and attackers battle in a world of bits—code that
can eventually be broken. Scientists at the University of Calgary are part
of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
and French partnership that aims to use quantum cryptography to make
computational security impervious to attacks now and forever.

The
research group, jointly headquartered at the University of Waterloo and
Télécom ParisTech in France, involves the U of C’s Barry Sanders and
Wolfgang Tittel of the Institute for Quantum Information Science in the
Faculty of Science as well as partners from Waterloo and the Université de
Montreal.

The federal government announced Monday that the
Canadian project will receive a total of $750,000 from NSERC over the next
three years. French researchers from Télécom ParisTech, Laboratoire de
Photonique Quantique et Moléculaire and SeQureNet will receive 399,392
euros from France’s Agence Nationale pour la Recherche.

“Although
quantum cryptography works today, we have to move to dynamic quantum
communication networks for the technology to be widely adopted, and one
focus of this project is on creating quantum networks,” says Sanders,
director of the U of C’s Institute for Quantum Information Science and
iCORE Chair of Quantum Information Science.

Quantum cryptographic
security relies on the quantum uncertainty principle whereby an
eavesdropper cannot avoid being detected. With this strategic bi-national
project, scientists will push to develop fast, long-distance secure
quantum communication within a network setting.

“We are moving
from physics to engineering to make quantum cryptography practical,” says
Tittel, the NSERC/GDC/iCORE Chair of Quantum Cryptography and
Communication. Tittel was among the first scientists in the world to apply
quantum information techniques to applications outside the laboratory.

“Instead of inventing an entire new network and infrastructure
from scratch, our research looks at what we have today, such as fibre
optic cables, and how we can build on that,” he says.

Sanders says
the international group hopes to create a system whereby information can
be sent over continent-wide secure quantum networks at the same rates as
today’s non-quantum networks.

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