In 2025, cybersecurity will go beyond the need to protect against ransomware, viruses, malware, and phishing attacks, as credible threats to today’s secure communications will be at the highest level they have been since the world’s first secure communications. NIST introduced three post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards in an effort to increase the level of asymmetrical encryption used in secure communications. These new standards include a Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism Standard, a Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard, and a Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Standard. The implementation of these standards is intended to create quantum-resistant cybersecurity for data, voice, and video communications and make it more difficult for quantum computers to eventually crack public key asymmetric encryption.
Though PQC is a necessary step forward to address quantum driven threats, entanglement-based quantum networking provides the most secure solution because of its quantum physics-based properties inherent within its implementation. The nature of entanglement inherently mitigates any attempt to view, record, or intercept and rebroadcast these qubits which can be detected by each connected party.
These are five predictions for modern entanglement-based quantum networking which are enabling the most secure communication networks in the world.
- Quantum Networking error correction will drive us to lower qubit error rates and higher quality for increased key generation rates at lower costs. Increased error correction for quantum networks drives increased throughput and bandwidth over these quantum physics-based networks. Quantum network error correction will also usher a new generation of quantum repeater designs and prototypes for quantum communications which will drive increased transport distances.
- Consolidation and integration of quantum network devices and components into rack mountable form factors supporting key generation will become more pervasive. Building quantum networks in labs has been enabled through the use of many discrete quantum components and devices. These components include precise and reliable single photon detectors, entangled photon sources, optical switches, FPGA devices and controllers, reliable and precise time fan-out devices, and photon counters to name a few. We will see consolidation and integration of these components and devices into rack mountable production quality products in 1, 2, and 3 RU footprints.
- Simulation capabilities will allow large scale simulations of quantum computers and quantum networks. Advanced entanglement-based simulation tools will begin to take advantage of clusters of supercomputer cloud data centers to reach never-before-seen design and analysis of large scale quantum networks. Simulations will be seen which incorporate low-level photonic characterization and operation up to the scale of hundreds of nodes only possible with comprehensive simulation tools running in massively scalable cloud compute environments. We will begin to see viable architectures and topologies which lay the foundation for a Quantum Internet.
- The first deployment of a quantum-safe defense-in-depth implementation will be demonstrated using PQC with Quantum Secure Communication (QSC). This combination will show that PQC can be deployed across an end-to-end network combined with entanglement-based quantum networking over target-rich transport links carrying organizations' highest volume of most valuable information. These deployments will deliver secure symmetric key generation for layer 1 security, MACsec, IPSec, and TLS over existing traditional classical networks combined with an entanglement-based quantum network underlay.
- There will be an obvious shift to integrating QKD networks with entanglement-based quantum networks which are multipurpose and do not rely on untrustworthy relay points like QKD does. Public deployments of quantum-safe key generation will see notable shifts from pure QKD implementations to entanglement-based quantum secure communications networks which can be used to secure site-to-site traffic, network quantum computers with one another, and network distributed quantum sensors.
