Indian cryptography research prepares for quantum.

• Cryptography, a technique that secures information by converting plain text into ciphertext, is gaining traction in India.

• The primary goal of cryptographic systems is to improve system security.

• Cryptography has a long history, dating back to ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets and the Caesar cipher used by Julius Caesar in the first century BC.

• Scientists have developed sophisticated methods to prevent adversaries from cracking secret codes and gaining unauthorised access to sensitive information.

• Cryptographic algorithms convert messages in ways that make it difficult, expensive, or both to decode them.

• The search for harder problems, even those that quantum computers may find hard to solve, is a critical area of research and development.

• Modern cryptographic systems are built on problems that demand far too many resources to be solved.

• Indian researchers are working extensively on areas such as communication complexity, proof complexity, and algebraic coding theory.

• The goal is to make sure an adversary, especially one with enormous computational resources, can’t crack the code.

• The key, a secret value an algorithm uses to encrypt or decrypt data, is at the heart of any cryptosystem.

• Researchers prefer algorithms that generate keys to be one-way functions, which are simple to use but hard to crack.

• Some cryptography researchers are working on simplifying the decryption side in particular and considering whether shorter proofs can be used to verify the integrity of data in artificial intelligence and large language models.

• Cryptography is not just a mathematical or academic curiosity but is of considerable practical interest.

Disruption of Cryptographic Systems: Homomorphic Encryption and Quantum Information Technologies

• Homomorphic encryption allows calculations on encrypted data without decrypting it first, increasing risk.

• Quantum computers could easily break encryption methods, leading to the development of quantum resistant encryption (QRC).

• Researchers worldwide are working on QRC, a combination of cryptography and quantum physics.

• India’s cryptography research is catching up with the European Union, U.S., and China, with the National Quantum Mission enabling satellite-based secure quantum communications.

• A team of Indian scientists has published a paper describing a method to generate true random numbers for secure private keys and passwords.

• Major government funders for cryptography research include the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications.

• A study by the Thales Group predicts a surge in sensitive data in the cloud from 51% to 68% by 2027.

• Widespread data loss is a concern, with nearly three-fourths of all organizations facing multiple data breaches due to inadequate encryption.