BT and Toshiba have launched the first commercial trial of a quantum-secured network that will block vulnerabilities in encryption.
Professional services group EY will use the network to connect two of its sites in London, one at London Bridge and the other at Canary Wharf.
The costly Quantum computers technology, which is being developed by companies including Google, IBM and Microsoft, offers the potential to crunch data millions of times faster than supercomputers.
BT’s Chief Technology Officer Howard Watson said quantum technology could be used to break current encryption keys while data is being transmitted.
Quantum key distribution (QKD), however, uses photonics to transmit the encryption key in fibre networks, he said. If the QKD is hacked in transmission, its state is changed and therefore the attack will be detected in real time.
BT will provide the encrypted links over its Openreach private fibre networks, while Toshiba is providing the QKD hardware and key management software.
