Add a dash of quantum for secure cloud computing

February 4, 2015 Off By David
Object Storage

Grazed from NewScientist. Author: Jacob Aron.

These days it’s easy to access ultra-powerful computers: just borrow one from Amazon, Microsoft or other firms offering cloud computing services. But analysing data on someone else’s hardware means they can see what you’re doing – not ideal if you want to keep it secret. Now it seems a dash of quantumness might be the best way to stay safe in the cloud.

There are currently two ways to run secure cloud computing. The first is called homomorphic encryption, essentially a complex mathematical trick that means you can send your data to a cloud provider in an encrypted form. Without this trick, the cloud computer would normally be unable to run calculations on data that was obscured like this. Computer firm IBM has been working on this since 2009…

A second possibility came in 2012, when Stefanie Barz, then at the University of Vienna, Austria, and her colleagues demonstrated ways of manipulating quantum states that can keep a quantum server blind as it processes data…

Read more from the source @ http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26918-add-a-dash-of-quantum-for-secure-cloud-computing.html#.VNKArVXF9xs