Quantum computing will make cryptography obsolete. But computer scientists are working to make them unhackable.

A pixel art-style illustration of a castle representing the protection of data.

Quantum computers are coming. And when they arrive, they are going to upend the way we protect sensitive data.

Unlike classical computers, quantum computers harness quantum mechanical effects — like superposition and entanglement — to process and store data in a form beyond the 0s and 1s that are digital bits. These "quantum bits" — or qubits — could open up massive computing power.