Episode Details

Data harvest is already underway as bad actors await the description power of quantum computers. In this Tech Barometer podcast, technology experts Marco Graziano, Steve McDowell and Don Gentile explain why IT organizations must implement quantum-resistant encryption now, not later.

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Transcript:

Marco Graziano: All infrastructure today, inter-company communication and on the internet, is possible because you can protect this communication channel with encryption. It’s all secure because of encryption.

Steve McDowell: I can take a key that would take, you know, however many hundreds of years on a GPU today and solve it in hours on a quantum computer.

Marco Graziano: Overnight, communication becomes insecure.

Don Gentile: When you think about the bad actors, they have access to harvest now, decrypt later, which means they’re collecting your data today and it can be broken with tomorrow’s quantum computing decryption capabilities.

Jason Lopez: Three technologists, Marco Graziano, Steve McDowell, and Don Gentile are saying pretty much the same thing. Encryption, as we know it, is facing an existential crisis. According to Marco Graziano, it’s closer than most of us think. This is the Tech Barometer podcast. I’m Jason Lopez. Graziano’s path started decades before anyone was talking about quantum computers. Early in his career, Graziano worked at Olivetti. It’s the Italian company whose 1965 Programma 101 is widely considered the world’s first personal computer. Its design would go on to influence Steve Jobs and the original Apple. Olivetti was the kind of place that launched many computer science careers, shaping Silicon Valley and beyond. Olivetti alumni like Graziano are still at it. From pioneering streaming media, home security and blockchain technologies, he now pushes the limits of AI with his whole system approach.

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Marco Graziano: In the time of AI, specialization is over. Today you need to be a generalist, not a specialist, because your specialization will never be as good as AI. I remember in the 80s and 90s, in computer companies, there were people who dedicated their whole career to SCSI firmware, to BIOS, to Ethernet firmware. Their whole career, they wouldn’t be able to do anything else outside that area of expertise. And that expertise was so deep that it was amazing. These jobs don’t exist anymore. Today, my recommendation to a young generation of engineers is think systems, think outside the specialization. Become an inventor. Go back to the Renaissance. What pieces fit together? How do they fit together? What does working mean? What is the end goal?

Jason Lopez: This background on Marco’s view of technology and innovation helps to understand his concern about quantum computing.

Marco Graziano: The moment I realized that this was an issue is when I read about Harvest today and Decrypt tomorrow, because that’s not obvious. There is a risk today, if quantum computers are not available, for communication that we are exchanging today, because this communication can be collected, harvested, and become unprotected one day soon. So that realization made me move in working in this.

Jason Lopez: And some of what’s being harvested right now isn’t sitting in a well-guarded data center.

Marco Graziano: So we know that devices will hit Q day. We know that communication that’s being collected today by bad actors will become visi