Tokunbo Makanju, Assitant Dean, College of Engineering and Computing Sciences, New York Institute of Technology Vancouver

Despite objections by IBM, the announcement by Google that they had achieved Quantum Supremacy in October 2019 did not come as a surprise to many. Keen watchers of the race had expected the announcement to happen sometime in 2019 or 2020. The implications of the announcement to cybersecurity is not lost to most industry professionals. This talk will attempt to broaden the understanding of its audience on the why this a threat. This talk will cover topics that include the concepts of quantum mechanics, how they make quantum computers work and why they pose a threat to the current practice of cryptography. This will all be done in a manner that everyone can understand. Building on that, the talk will also talk about the benefits of quantum computing and how organizations can start preparing now for the change.