Swathes of Asia’s financial systems are vulnerable to potential disruption from quantum computing technology, including those hosting secure transactions, industry executives have warned.
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Only a handful of major economies in the region, such as China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, have embarked on strategies to safeguard their systems, but most financial institutions across the region are vulnerable to quantum attacks because they are ill prepared, experts say.
The threat looms even as digital wallets and real-time payment systems are widely being used and deeply integrated into the financial systems. Quantum computing is a new branch of processing which can solve complex problems within minutes or hours that might take a classical computer thousands of years to crack.
While it will allow scientists to test and discover new medicines speedily, build climate modelling systems and accelerate scientific research, the system also has the ability to break public-key cryptography or security systems of digital tokens such as bitcoin.
“Asia’s financial systems face an existential threat from quantum computing’s ability to break widely used public-key cryptographic protocols” which underpin digital signatures and enable secure communications, according to Anndy Lian, a Singapore-based intergovernmental blockchain adviser.
Once sufficiently powerful quantum computers emerge – expected within five to 10 years – they could attack stored financial data, forge digital identities and compromise interbank settlements, experts warn.