Public Cryptography and Private Key - The Cryptographic Outlook

THE CRYPTOGRAPHIC OUTLOOK

The Gartner Group estimated that by 2003 up to 80 percent of large businesses would test at least one public-key infrastructure, according to Information-Week. Meanwhile, the search for ever-more impenetrable encryption systems was certain to intensify. The U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory was home to a program dedicated to the development of quantum cryptography, which incorporates the laws of quantum physics into traditional cryptographic methods to design the most powerful encryption systems yet, overcoming the flaws and cracks in public-key encryption systems. Quantum cryptographic codes are built on a series of photons, each with their own individual and varying properties that render them analogous to computer language's ones and zeroes. Essentially, the development of such technologies and the increasing sophistication of hackers and code-breaking systems has set off a virtual arms race between those using cryptography to enhance security and those using cryptography to compromise security.