How to preserve secrets in a quantum age

often that a bit of mind-bending mathematics can avert disaster. But researchers at America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology () have done their bit: last week, after years of analysis, they gave their stamp of approval to some equations that might, in time, save untold petabytes of sensitive data from prying eyes.The existing encryption standards that underpin just about every online exchange of information are a bit of gnarly mathematics designed to be well-nigh impossible for today’s computers to crack without just the right arithmetical key. But ’s scientists have not been pondering today’s machines. They worry about a coming era of .