The new era of quantum computing is upon us, and as previously explored on Newspoint, the University of Malta is contributing to the advancements being made in this field.  

Thanks to a NATO-funded security programme, together with a team of researchers, Dr Christian Colombo and Dr Mark Vella, both Senior Lecturers at the Department of Computer Science within the Faculty of Information & Communication Technology, are working to strengthen computer security systems.

“Imagine you have a message to send through your browser, and you’d like to keep that private. The way things work right now is that you make sure the padlock is activated and that sets off layers of protection depending on solving really complex mathematical problems”, said Dr Colombo.

With quantum computers, which many researchers around the world are working to develop, such mathematical problems might become relatively easy to solve, causing what we nowadays assume to be safe, to fall apart.

“We are looking at new communication protocols to be put in place in the eventuality these quantum computers are used. We are trying to anticipate this scenario”, said Dr Colombo.

The study has also been featured on TVM news.