Oxford University brings secure quantum to the cloud

Oxford University claims to have successfully and securely used quantum computing through the Cloud, showing a promising outlook for the use of quantum at home.

“We have shown for the first time that quantum computing in the cloud can be accessed in a scalable, practical way,” announced David Lucas, co-head of the Oxford University physics research team and lead scientist at the UK Quantum Computing and Simulation Hub.

While quantum cloud-based services are already offered by providers such as Google, Amazon, and IBM, scaling and expanding their use are limited due to a lack of assurance in the privacy and security of customers’ data.

The team at Oxford University believe a new approach dubbed “blind quantum computing” will address these challenges by allowing any individual, either at home or in an office accessing a cloud server, to use quantum through the cloud without their data being vulnerable to exposure.

It claims this will allow their new method to be scaled up to large quantum computations.

Everything you need to know about quantum (but were afraid to ask)

“Using blind quantum computing, clients can access remote quantum computers to process confidential data with secret algorithms and even verify the results are correct, without revealing any useful information,” explains Peter Drmota, study lead at Oxford University Physics.

“As quantum computers become more capable, people will seek to use them with complete security and privacy over networks, and our new results mark a step change in capability in this respect,” Lucas adds.

According to the experts, we are just at the beginning regarding quantum, with use cases and testing in the field happening now. Read about Finland’s bid to become the forerunner in quantum here and how Rolls-Royce uses it in its research to build nuclear reactors on the moon and Mars.