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.