Quantum cryptography

The increased use, features and advantages of a recently developed quantum cryptographic system are discussed. Invented by Charles Bennet and Giles Brassard in the year 1984, this quantum key distribution (QKD) approach provides information-theoretic secrecy firmly based on the laws of physics. It is a technique for agreeing on a shared random bit sequence within two distinct devices, and where one uses the random bit sequences as secret keys for encoding and decoding messages. This QKD is not, in itself, a full cryptosystem, but contains a large amount of sophisticated network protocols. This approach is being utilized by various agencies with different encryption standards for the purpose of encoding and decoding.