Telecom secretary asks C-DoT to work on 6G, launches Quantum Communication Lab

Source: This post is based on the article “Telecom secretary asks C-DoT to work on 6G, launches Quantum Communication Lab” published in Economic Times on 13th October 2021.

What is the News?

Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), the premier telecom R&D centre of the Department of Telecommunications has unveiled an indigenously developed Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) solution Lab.

What is Quantum Key Distribution(QKD)?

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a secure communication technique that uses quantum properties of photons, the elementary particles of light, to encrypt secret keys that can be shared by two parties to protect their communications. 

What makes QKD unbreakable?

The security of QKD stems from the ability to detect any intrusion on the QKD transmission. Because of the unique and fragile properties of photons, any third party (or eavesdropper) who tries to read or copy the photons in any way will change the photons’ state.

The change will be detected by the endpoints, alerting them that the key has been tampered with and must be discarded. A new key is then transmitted. Moreover, since the keys generated are truly random, they are protected from future hacking attempts.

Why is there a need for QKD?

Typical encryption relies on traditional mathematics, and while for now, it is more or less adequate and safe from hacking. But the development of quantum computing threatens that.

That’s why the world needs a more secure means of encryption and QKD was found to be the only provably secure communication method because it uses physics – not math – to encrypt data.

Source: This post is based on the article “Telecom secretary asks C-DoT to work on 6G, launches Quantum Communication Lab” published in Economic Times on 13th October 2021.