Dave Burg, EY Americas Cybersecurity Leader, joins Cheddar News to discuss the rise of quantum computing and how it can compromise existing security measures at play today, and what the timeline looks like for quantum computing to become a reality.

Cheddar's News Wrap

The Rise of Quantum Computing

Welcome back This segment is brought to you by ey empowering today's leaders to realize tomorrow's opportunities. Now the 2022 rs a conference is underway in SAn Francisco. The annual cybersecurity event brings together the world's top cybersecurity, government and business leaders to discuss the latest trends in the industry so they can come up with solutions to move forward and address current and future cyber threats. Trick is not to discuss all things. Quantum risk and cyber threats. Dave berg. Ey, Americas cybersecurity leader. David, thank you so much for being here now. It's been two years since our essay has been in person. What is the biggest trend you are watching today? What may be different from two years ago? Well, first of all, there's a great deal of excitement here in SAn Francisco. I think people are delighted to be together again sharing insights, sharing technologies and approaches to solving problems. I think it's one of the biggest changes that occurred really over the last two years. It was just an enormous amount of progress using technology in different ways to support remote work and to enable different kinds of consumer or business processes using technology. Now, how does this rise of quantum computing possess the power to compromise existing security measures at play today? Yeah, well, quantum computing really has two different sides to the story on one hand is an enormous amount of computational power that will enable human beings to solve mathematics, financial and other kinds of scientific problems unlike ever before. But that same type of technology can be used to compromise the way that we factor numbers, which is used in the way that we encrypt data and information both in motion and at rest. And so what what we're concerned about, what we're focused on our finding solutions to be able to really deal with this with with with this problem, as it as it arises now, as the reality of quantum computing draws near, where are your advising companies to start addressing this shift and reduce risks? Yeah, I think one of the key elements that we're paying a lot of attention to is guidance that came from the United States Department of Homeland Security, which encouraged us federal agencies to begin to prepare for what is called post quantum encryption challenges now. So what we're doing is applying the DHS approach and we're using that to enable corporations to uh to prepare but to focus on certain types of business processes and information assets are really which are really the most important. So we think that's one of the key key ways to start off is to focus on things that really matter the most to the business. So when do you predict this transition will happen? And what is pushing forward this agenda? Yeah, we we think that quantum computing will be commercially viable likely within the next 3-5 years. One of the elements that's really pushing it forward is there is a great deal of geopolitical competition is essentially a race between the east and the Western parts of the world to develop this type of technology, to be able to utilize some of those very positive and creative components that I talked a little bit about earlier, but also to be able to use that type of of technology to be able to bypass various kinds of encryption that are in place today or have been used historically. All right, Dave Berg. Ey, Americas, cybersecurity leader. Dave Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise. Now again, this segment was brought to you by EY helping you realize your transformation through the power of people. Technology and innovation visit ey dot com to learn more.