The national program in Russia plans to improve the information security of both government agencies and private companies. Experts want to achieve this by creating the first commercial quantum network in the country. It will provide the most reliable degree of information security available today. Data centers in Russia will establish a quantum communication line between them by 2021.
It is known that experts will build a network 670 km long between data centers located in Moscow and Udoml. They have powerful servers and network equipment designed to process, store and distribute information. Currently, the communication channels leading to the centers are protected by crypto-algorithms, the disadvantage of which is the existence of a key that is stored on the physical medium. So, having a key, fraudsters can intercept and decrypt the transmitted information.
To date, the only way to solve this problem is to use quantum communications. It is a data exchange technology that is protected by the quantum distribution of encryption keys. The hacker will not be able to intercept such a key, remaining unnoticed. Photons are used as carriers of transmitted information.
"If a hacker starts copying the state of a particle, its properties will instantly change. Thus, copying data will fail. Moreover, if someone tries to intercept the media during their transmission, the user of the system will know about it," said specialists.
Since the photons change their state after 140 km due to scattering, the developers plan to build six protected intermediate nodes on the 670 km line.
The project of the quantum communication line was named Landau, and Rostelecom was appointed responsible for its implementation. The project will be launched this year. It is expected that by the end of 2020 there will be a prototype of the service, and the project will be ready in 2021. The work is carried out as part of the national program "Digital Economy". It is known that in case of successful completion of the project, no one will be able to hack into computers, which will be great news for databases of large state corporations and banks.
As a reminder, the Russian Government approved the national program "Digital economy" and allocated 1 trillion rubles (217 billion $) from the Federal budget for the implementation of the presidential task.