Quantum Cybersecurity Explained: Are Your Systems Ready for the Quantum Storm?

This is Chris Versace here, and I want to welcome you to a very, what I consider to be, special conversation on this episode of "Why The Buzz?" We all know that cybersecurity is an unfortunate growth industry, one that's presenting numerous challenges to companies, enterprises, other businesses and other institutions and individuals alike. But in our conversation with Scope Technologies, we're going to learn all about the quantum threat when it comes to cybersecurity, something that seems to be poised to expand. Load cybersecurity demands even higher, and joining us to talk all about that are Sean Prescott and James Young of Scope Technologies. Scope is a company that focuses on quantum security and machine learning and leverages the power of neural networks. So sit back join me, as well as Bob Lang and Lindsey Bell as we talk with Scope Technologies and find out a lot more about the words quantum and entropy. Hang on.

Chris Versace  00:03

You know Bob and Lindsey. I got to tell you, I am super excited today. I know you guys know it, but for all the listeners there, we are going to be talking with the management team at Scope Technologies. This is a company that focuses on quantum security and machine learning, leveraging neural networks that that sounds like a lot of high tech stuff, I grant you, but I think that between Sean Prescott, the founder and CTO and James Young, the CEO, they're going to help us understand what Scope is doing and what the opportunities are ahead. So Bob and Lindsey and everybody else listening, please welcome Sean and James to our conversation.

Lindsey Bell  00:41

Welcome to the show.

Bob Lang  00:43

Great to have you here.

Chris Versace  00:44

Thanks guys. You know, it's kind of a busy time. I know we've got, you know, several weeks towards the end of the year, companies are doing a lot of planning and stuff like that. But very happy that you guys could join us, because, you know, the topic of security is, it's a huge pain point, especially cyber security. It seems like almost every day there's some new attack. If you're reading bleeping computer or some of the other sources out there that are the de facto trade rags of the day, it's just, it's just a unbelievable growth industry, and it just continues to spawn new levels of cybersecurity spending. I think Gartner just increased its outlook for IT security spending over the next 12 to 18 months. So it's very opportune time to talk about scope, but also introducing quantum security and neural networks to the audience. So let me start with uh, Sean, because you're the founder as well as the CTO. Tell us, from your perspective, who scope is and really what it's trying to do. Oh, I think we've got some technical difficulties there, James, let me, let me just reroute the question to you. I'm sure you're able to handle that.

James Young  02:02

Yeah absolutely, as Sean will get his his body going. No problem. Yeah. So really, what we do, in the most succinct manner, is we protect data. That is what we do. We protect data. We protect data both from the impending or future quantum storm and all of the essentially changing of the security landscape that will result from quantum computing. As quantum computing grows in its strength and prevalence, ultimately, it has the ability to make all current cybersecurity and encryption processes obsolete.

Chris Versace  02:41

Alright, let me, let me just back you up, because protect data. Well, we there's a lot of companies out there in the cybersecurity landscape that are trying to do that. What separates scope apart from them?

James Young  02:54

Great, great question. Great question. So as mentioned, as I said, we protect data both now and into the future. The fundamental of our technology, which Sean, of course, will get into in a moment here, is our quantum resilient entropy and our quantum resilient encryption, as well as our fully decentralized immutable storage. Now, again, I'll save the technical depth for Sean as far as entropy and the discussion of well, what is true entropy? How does it differ from what has always been utilized? But with what we do is we ensure that companies now are able to have full round trip encryption on all of their data, as well as full decentralized storage, meaning it is impervious to all ransomware attacks and the current attack vectors that are happening right now. It also ensures, because it is based in true non deterministic entropy, quantum resistant entropy and encryption, meaning that when the bad actors have full access and control of the quantum powered computers, they cannot be attacking any of our clients infrastructure due to our full round trip quantum resilient encryption and decentralized storage, we know that there's not going to be press releases put out by the bad actors and various groups around the world saying we now have the power to break all encryption. There won't be those sorts of announcements, it will just start happening. And we're getting closer and closer to that. And again, as you guys have probably seen variety of news articles, of some attacks that have been going on already, and the the power and prevalence of the quantum computer is becoming closer and closer to to reality. So that attack risk is absolutely there.

Chris Versace  04:43

All right, James, let me, let me just so we're all on the same page. And by us I mean Chris, me, Lindsey, Bob, but the listeners, you used two words quite a bit in there. And I just want to make sure everybody has an understanding of what they are, quantum and then entropy.

James Young  05:01

Beautiful, beautiful. And that's a great segway for Sean to go into his background exactly what those are and what we're doing with them.

Sean Prescott  05:11

Absolutely. So let's try this one. I hope this works this time. Can you hear me?

Sean Prescott  05:15

Yep, you're all good. Fire away.

Sean Prescott  05:16

Alright, awesome. Yeah, so entropy and quantum, right? Let's take a step back. Obviously, you know, computer security, network security, etc, has been an evolving science, just like computers and the technology they're in over the last decades, right? It's definitely become more mainstream and accepted that we do have, you know, hackers out there. It's called a full time job nowadays, back in the day, otherwise it was, you know, an underground organization, something that you wouldn't want to call yourself to the open public, because it was just a dangerous thing to be doing nowadays, full careers and obviously, infrastructures, including industries, have been built upon the security world. And as the science evolves from stronger and better computers that can, you know, crunch numbers faster and more in parallel, especially with decentralization out there. The next step in the evolution really is the quantum step, and this quantum step is a total different paradigm of how computers even work. You know, the ones and zeros that we know from the computer in the electronics world for all this time is moving into the zeros, the ones and the zero slash ones. So this is the quantum kind of world, so it's hard to compare, but, you know, bringing it back to, let's say, the more sophisticated, but those still birds view overview. What this means is we prepare for the future of these kind of new level of attacks where these quantum computers can just slice through let's call it the classic security and encryption frameworks that have been established now and throughout the last few decades. What we do here in particular is we use our NIST certified hardware we adapt to our special drivers or special software and our very, very customer proprietary distribution system so that we can bring this level of security, this, what we call entropy, being an integral part of how these keys and passwords are being generated. We can bring this entropy directly to our clients, wherever they are in the world, if they're in the cloud or on premise, and whatever geolocation they're at, we can provide that to them at breakneck speeds. That's what we do, and we do excellently so. And we do it in a way where it's non intrusive, it's not a rip and replace kind of a thing. We do it in a way that helps clients build upon our technology, rather than have to depend on our technology. So that's the paradigm of our system.

Chris Versace  07:47

Thank you, Sean. Let me sneak one more question before Bob and Lindsey start asking. When we talk about this change from, I think, as you said, current computing technology, to quantum computing technology. Where are we in that shift when it comes to cyber security? And where are you as scope in that shift?

Sean Prescott  08:12

So in one way, we're very, very close to, you know, the why the Y2K you know, the y2k problem we had, you know, almost 25 years ago. This time around, it's the quantum threat, and I am sure that we can prepare for it. And that's what we do, being ahead of it, being very closely listening to our, you know, different channels, especially in the science world, especially on the NIST or standardization World, you know, with Kyber and these new frameworks, and essentially just the security infrastructure. The security world is very, very focused on these changes, and so listening and being active and understanding what's going on keeps us ahead of the quantum threat, and also to verify the market. We do see additional you know, revolutions in the quantum space where, you know, more powerful computers have been made available. We have quantum resources that can be rented for lots of money. But you know, for these state actors, lots of money isn't really a barrier. So, yeah, this is ultimately coming, and it will become more and more mainstream, as we've expected it to happen over the last decades.

Lindsey Bell  09:23

Well, it's interesting that you compare it to the Y2k, threat. Yet it hasn't been like you just said. It hasn't become this mainstream thing yet. I mean, quantum the quantum threat, isn't something that I hear about in my my daily activity, you know, scanning through the news and such. So talk a little bit more about how it becomes, how individuals become more aware of it, and how corporations, how aware are corporations of this threat? Yeah, so family adopting the technology that you have, are they in the very early stages of adoption?

Sean Prescott  09:59

To a degree. Yeah. The degree is definitely very right? We speak to some pretty big multinationals. We also speak to smaller SMEs, you know, from law firms, you know, several dozen employees and several 100 clients to, you know, the mega corps that have several million clients, and let's call it the the medical field, right, for instance, insurances, etc, various degrees of preparedness or awareness. Dominantly, though, all of these bigger companies, they have to report, you know, they're audited. So their whole IT security framework, their policies, I have not yet seen one that addresses the entropy aspect of their security framework. They're always talking about, you know, don't install viruses, don't, you know, open up attachments from unknown senders. But never is there, you know, the discussion about what entropy is, it's, you know, it kind of a new word for a lot of people, actually, even though it's been an integral part of, you know, the evolution of our technology stack globally. So what we what we do is, you know, we talked to them, we explained to them like y 2k had a certain date, right? So that was January 31 1999 the quantum. You know, the y 2q threat doesn't really have a date, but we know it's coming, right? And so preparing for that and the current threats is what we try to ease our clients into and letting them understand and help them on that way.

Chris Versace  11:23

Let me. Let me sneak one in there. So Sean, when you're talking to companies and you're identifying to them, Well, this was a quantum attack. This is an example of what we're talking about that's coming the storm. What are one or two of those examples that you kind of discuss?

Sean Prescott  11:39

It's lesser about what is, per se, exactly a quantum attack, but we show what a quantum attack could, you know, break even though they might have, you know, thought of all the surrounding, you know, systems and security measures. What we usually do is we assess their current technology stack, especially when it comes to to their data, and look at how they store their data and where they store their data and apply, let's say, current threats, especially the ransomware attacks or the DDoS attacks, by just over flooding their system with requests and shutting it down. And address that in a primary layer with our solution. The Quantum attack is already protected because we explain to them what we do on the entropy level, why and how we secure additional keys for their data as a security backup layer in case everything else fails, you know, the crowd strike situation happens, or there's some mega regional Altus outage over, you know, and in the east coast or west coast. So that is where our paradigm of data storage being decentralized, though verifiably secured, round trip, not just end to end, but round trip secured. That's the kind of approach that we take, and in that the discussion of quantum and why we're already building that in just not even as an optional it is happening. You're getting this no matter what, and it will benefit you in this way into the future, right?

Lindsey Bell  13:04

Well, and you talk about how you know security threats are constantly changing, so your your technology has to constantly change. How does that impact you from a cost perspective? Because you have to remain on top of things, innovative and evolving along with these threats.

Sean Prescott  13:21

Yeah, that's why our model is a SaaS platform. Right software as a service, or entropy as a service. That is how we position ourselves in the market. So for, you know, the recurring revenue aspect of it, the company provides a consistent and constant, you know, evolution of the software stack, the system stack, the hardware stack, and we constantly listen to our clients on one side, on what they need and what they want, and cater to them directly on the other side, we are very close with, again, the legal frameworks, the you know, new Dora compliance that indicates very clearly that you have to have disaster recovery and these kind of backup mechanism mechanisms in place. These are legal frameworks that companies have to adhere to. So when these companies go through these audit processes, we make sure that they don't, you know, hit the wall later in, let's say the next, you know, update, because they didn't think about entropy. Moving forward, this is going to be, you know, the de facto standard, where, if you do not have, you know, heightened or strengthened entropy. When building keys or generating, you know, secure keys, you will automatically fail. And so we're in a very unique position here to be able to provide that as a markets first, and very proud of it as well.

Bob Lang  14:35

Well, my question Sean is about AI, and obviously they they say, a lot of people say quantum AI is coming, and it's not there yet, but early adopters are going to have some sort of a competitive advantage here. Do you see an opportunity for your company to support some of these, the software and so forth, for quantum computing and AI or. Which you know may be complimentary, but not compatible, and but different components in a in a stack of tools, do you see an opportunity there?

Sean Prescott  15:09

1,000% in fact, we have that directly as an integral part of our system, so bit of the company history, back to one of the first questions is, where do we come from? And we come from a very strong background and security, but also on the AI side of things, right? AI and algorithms go together extremely well, and encryption and obviously the entropy sourcing mechanisms and optimizations they're in is where AI can excel. So we're literally in the middle of extending and expanding our optimization algorithms for delivering the entropy to our clients, using what we already have as an AI tech stack. So we're moving that emerging, that into each other to just really be the most efficient and obviously most secure, dominantly system out there on the on the market.

Lindsey Bell  15:58

Who are your biggest competitors in the space, because you have the cyber security companies, but who's doing the quantum security?

Sean Prescott  16:05

There are different customers that have spoken about different, you know, security vendors, right? So the field is kind of set to set upon, you know, different niches out there, right? You got the the auditors, you got the penetration testers, the security analysts, you got all of those markets out there. You got, you know, the hardware vendors, the HSM manufacturers. Those are, you know, hardware key systems that you can buy and use and obviously take care of certain key management parts of your infrastructure. But I think where we're unique is that we've built an entropy delivery system that can be verified to be magnitude stronger and better than any standard randomness any normal computer can generate. Based on that, we've built a distributed and ransomware proof storage network system distributed that you can also verify that you supply your keys you encrypt the data. We're just the ones distributing it and making it available globally, and we have no access to your data. So the trust but verify paradigm is extremely strong, and we've been, you know, layering upon our own tech stack to build further products, and we'll continue to do so. So uniquely, we have combined multiple, you know, strengths from, let's say, what different competitors individually can offer. But we've packaged that in an eloquent and very useful package for our individual clients, really tailored to exactly what they need for, you know, being compliant, but also being more efficient and definitely more safe with very, very sensitive data, especially in the medical field, or, you know, the financial field, you know, legally as well. You don't want wills and contracts to be sent around by email anymore. That's about as secure as a postcard. So we're doing our best to teach people that there is a better way, and our way is that way.

Lindsey Bell  17:54

So are you saying basically that you could put your your technology, your platform, your program, on top of, say, a Google Cloud or or, you know, iCloud, or whatever it is where the data is in the cloud space?

Sean Prescott  18:09

So from a user's perspective, when they use the front end interface, it is a bit like, you know, a cloud storage system, you know, maybe a Google Drive or a OneDrive, though, in the background, definitely on steroids, right? We don't have access to your data, so we can't run any analysis. That's not where we would be applying any kind of AI. Just to be clear, it's just data garbage to us. You have the keys, but from a user's perspective, where you just drag and drop your files, you can download them, you can share them, just like you'd expect from any other interface, from, let's say, a potential storage, you know, competitor. That's that's there. The beauty, though, is it is encryption based permissioning. If you have the keys, you have access. If you don't have the keys, you're out of luck. So as we don't have the keys, and we're proud to not have the keys, because that is literally what we want to be doing, is not have the keys, but have that kind of, let's say, security layer provided. Some of our clients, they use cloud services, you know, like Amazon or Asia from Microsoft, the and we're not here again to rip and replace what they have. We're just saying you already have it there in the cloud. How about you just create a redundant copy of that data and put it over to our infrastructure, just in case something goes down there, or you need to have it available in another zone somewhere at an instant. So that's an additional, you know, quality of life improvement that we can offer. Besides, you know, securing the stack additionally.

Lindsey Bell  19:38

What if you lose the key, since you-

Sean Prescott  19:42

Bot good on a on in that, in that setting, losing a key means losing access, right? That is the case, though there are recovery mechanisms that we can offer, especially to the the the white labels, as we call them. So for instance, if a. A client like a law firm would like to be a direct, you know, business partner of ours. They would get their own instance of the system in their own brand, on their own domain, right, powered by QSC, right? That's fine and powered by scope, but it would be in their own brand. And so for these companies, there can be an additional recovery key that can be set, set up with, perhaps, you know, an insurance or an escrow in case somebody would lose their key or lose access to their data, but on a normal, you know, encryption based security framework, if you lose your key, you lose access. That's what it is. So we can't help you there. Please don't lose your keys.

James Young  20:40

So and sort of I just jump in one thing, I think, just as I'm listening and just thinking from the listener's perspective, it feels like we should maybe dive in a little bit more into entropy, as we're talking about and some of the prior methods of entropy. Because ultimately, you know, when we're taught quantum computing and all of our technology and what we do it can get into science experiment style, and again, the number of people around the world that truly understand quantum computing and the qubit and its power and the rest are pretty minimal, certainly Sean being one of them at the at the top. So I think something that's important for everyone to understand is as complex as the topic is, it really is as simple as there is a weak point in encryption. The standard encryption methodology has a particular weak point, and that weak point is the entropy, or pseudo randomness that is within standard encryption. And that's really one of the basis and fundamentals of what we do and what we provide. So maybe Sean, if you want to sort of dive in a little bit to that.

Sean Prescott  21:47

Yeah I'd love to, I think that's a very good point there. James, thanks for pushing on that. So my, my analogy that I like to make, and this is, you know, true, true fact, if we think back to, you know, the way old, very slow computers we're talking, you know, the 70s and the 80s, with the black screen and the green text, or maybe the amber text, if you were, you know, into the newer kind of, you know, paradigm of that. So if you would ask a program on one of those computers, say, generate a random number, it would, you know, spit out some kind of a number. But what it would do in generating that random number is it would have some kind of an algorithm to say, take that entropy, and I'll get right to that. Take that entropy, do some math and magic with it, and spit out something else. In that case, the entropy would literally be time, the actual date and time on that computer, on the CPU chip. So if you would rewind the time and ask it to generate another random number, it would generate that same random number, because it has the same input, had the same entropy, right? And so that is called very weak entropy, because it is deterministic. The output is deterministic. If you rewind time, you get the same number, not random, right? It's just mathematic, as I call it. So in terms of the evolving of the evolution of that science and evolving that different, you know, ideas have been put together. The science experiment, you know, was on in full throttle. One one thought that maybe let's take some audio recording, right? Trying to get some randomness, get some audio recording of a river or a waterfall. Obviously, you're not going to get all the atoms of the water back up the hill to fall the same way to create that same audio. Pretty good idea. And then use that audio stream, as you know, part of entropy to generate, you know, those random numbers which are so desperately importantly needed for creating strong encryption keys. The problem is, you have this audio recording, so all you had to do is just replay and find the right sequence in the audio recording, and then again, you would create that kind of entropy that just is replayable, hence deterministic. So what we have, and this is really what differentiates us, is the hardware that we use is very special hardware. It's noise signaling generators that, again, are NIST certified and standardized, that create non deterministic randoms, meaning you cannot replay it. You cannot generate the same signal. You cannot in any way, create the same environment to create a certain output, you cannot replay that environment in any which way, right? And so the the non deterministic aspect of it, that is ultimately what quantum computers cannot cut through, right? If it's about finding a sequence or trying to replay that sequence, that is what quantum computers are brutally good at, right? That's the big paradigm shift, if you want to be precise, on it, non deterministic. Randomness is difficult, hard as it should be, because it's encryption, right? So that's really the technological shift that we've, you know, built, provided and are servicing to our clients.

Lindsey Bell  24:59

So I have a quick follow up question on that. You've used the word encrypted a lot, and then you're tying it to entropy. And when I hear the word encrypted, I think of blockchain, right? So could you maybe relate what you're doing to the blockchain? Is it similar? Is there a weak point in the blockchain? Because we're as a consumer, you're made to believe that the blockchain is unbreakable, and it's this encrypted thing that you just can't decide hackers can't hack into. So, is there a relation there? Or am I just kind of stretching for straws?

Sean Prescott  25:29

No you're not wrong at all. Not all blockchains are built the same, and not all blockchain foundational algorithms are built the same, right? There are some chains you know, as in, let's make an example. The Bitcoin network is built fundamentally different than, let's say, the Ethereum network. And if you if you use, you know, elliptic curve, or even you know Edward curves, those are very, very quantum resilient on its own as an algorithm, though, obviously the key, the actual generating that private key that you ultimately then access your funds with. That can still be the weak spot, because you're still generating that on a very, very normal laptop computer, etc. So my advice would be, and this is what we've done for, you know, a pretty big client as well, to secure those wallets at the key generation process with our quantum resilient entropy. And then you've covered what you can cover. We can change the Bitcoin network if there's another foundational law within, you know, the network itself, that is something that the decentralized space will have to figure out by voting into, you know, a fork of a new blockchain. But we can do our part by securing the wallets by securing those keys and access keys with our quantum entropy.

Bob Lang  26:45

So I had a question for Sean. I'm looking at the business model, and you have the freemium SaaS model and the enterprise solution. What, what is the mix there of customers for each one of those, those two models, and where's the where's the profitability, the bigger profitability at between those two.

Sean Prescott  27:06

So in my career, the most, let's say profitable, or let's put it the way that I find have been, has been most successful has been the B to B to C market. So the captive markets of the enterprises that then ultimately have a white label solution, therefore have 10,000 clients, 100,000 employees, whatever it is, they will be using the system in that capacity, meaning that instead of going for the retail market, and that's a great market too, but the faster, easier and then obviously, integration wise, more interesting because you're much more closer to, you know, a major client and what they want and what they need. It just has been proven to me that the system can be improved much, much faster and efficiently. And so therefore I find the initial success easily or easier to achieve on the B to B model.

James Young  28:04

There also is a absolutely and just Further to that, there's certainly a more early adopter side of things, or need on the retail side, as again, the attacks and the risks become more prevalent than each of us as individuals we want to have our secure data, our passwords, our will and legal information, health information, in pictures, all of these sorts of things, there'll be real value and need from an individual to have this sort of encrypted data storage beyond just the Standard cloud storage that we all have with the businesses, certainly, there is that need, as well as the regulations and requirements that are put on companies to ensure that they have the proper preparedness plans and the proper structures in place.

Chris Versace  28:57

Let me kind of ask a question that's been percolating in the back of my mind. You know, I think we can all agree that the cyber threat landscape is a rising tide, and it's going to lift a lot of different boats. But from what we're talking about here, particularly on the quantum side, and the need to protect against the use of quantum by bad actors are there, you know it certain industries that might be impacted more or sooner than others. In other words, if someone's following scope, where are they likely to see you win customers and deploy your technologies?

Sean Prescott  29:37

Very, very good question. The The answer is pretty much, you know, right down the middle in the data that needs to be secured the most. We're talking financial data, so I'm talking banking exchanges. We're talking legal data, meaning also exchanges in banks and obviously law firms and and brokers, etc. I'm. Um, but especially also medical data, right? Currently, I think probably in the medical field, the, you know, the supply for easy to use, but those secure systems is, is terrible, right? It also has a lot to do with the the knowledge, right? These are doctors. These are specialists in their own field. They're not computer scientists. The patients are usually of a different generation that aren't familiar with how to use the technology. So anything around, you know, transmitting, let's say medical, HIPAA compliant data, sometimes, unfortunately, is sending a fax of an x ray, you know, through those little channels. I mean, I can't read an x ray, and I definitely can't read a faxed X ray. I don't know how the doctors do it, so that, you know, they're brutally professional on what they do, but we have to give them that information a better secure channel. And so there's a lot, a lot of potential in the medical field, but obviously on a regulatory side of things, the financial sector is, you know, screaming for something like that. They just have to have it. So we're definitely pushing hard on that side, and it's reflected in our sales pipeline.

Chris Versace  31:07

What about government, defense, DOD, that sort of thing?

Sean Prescott  31:12

Yeah, very much. So, so my background also, you know, I worked at the NSA in Switzerland. I built digital identity frameworks. I was the program manager for the identity and access management system on a federal level, securing communication channels of the Federal Council Switzerland is very confused. We have seven Presidents there, and so they need to talk to each other this kind of background, and the pushes within the government are very, very clear. And this has been, you know, more than a decade ago, obviously, as the technology evolved, and now the quantum technology is available as a new and the countermeasures that we deploy, this kind of, you know, development within the government has been seen again with, you know, the US is administration pushing out. You know, needs to have this kind of technology in, sourced and built within the United States government. So it is 100% something that is coming in basically the entire Western Hemisphere.

Lindsey Bell  32:12

Geographically, where are you primarily your clientele? Where are they primarily focused?

Sean Prescott  32:19

Dominantly, the United States, North America, also in Europe.

Chris Versace  32:26

All right. And one final question before we wrap up today's conversation. And again, thank you both for joining us. I think this has just been, on the one hand, fascinating, at the same time illuminating, throwing a spotlight on something that I don't think a lot of folks are thinking about today and they should have on their radar screens. And kind of with that, speaking of radar screens, for someone who's sitting here today and hearing the scope story for the very first time, what would you say are some things that you know over the next couple months, next few quarters, might be to the extent you can telegraph them, should be some interesting sign posts for you to watch out for. Pay attention to that sort of thing.

James Young  33:15

And just to make sure I understand that the question, Are you meaning things that we are watching for in the industry, and additional quantum developments, or the impossible investor watching first from scope,

Chris Versace  33:30

I would say both you know, especially what you guys are paying attention to. Because I because this is such a new topic, I think if you, you know, are able to contemplate potential tipping points. You know, that would be of interest to the listeners, because it'll allow them to see that. Oh, yes, I, I heard the scope story. I see that it is tracking or maybe accelerating. You know, these are the things as investors and, you know, doing your homework, doing your diligence on a prospect, you know you want to pay attention to.

James Young  34:02

For sure, for sure, absolutely and so really an interesting thing of our opportunity is that we have, obviously the incoming quantum storm, y2k or Y2q coming that obviously will put this much more in the forefront of everyone's Mind, businesses and individuals, but the fact that we are protecting against the current attack vectors right now and our system is impervious to the current ransomware attacks, and ransomware really is not focused specifically on those high value data industries that we talked About, the health the financials, really any company, and every style and type and industry of company is being attacked with ransomwares right now. And whether that be a small business, you know, being ransomware for 20,000 or 50,000 or a large entity being ransomware for millions of dollars the frequency. Of those attacks is increasing, and as those attacks continue to increase, the need for decentralized, fully encrypted storage like ours just grows additionally to that. And this will be something I'll hand to Sean to give a little bit more detail and context on but there's particular attacks within the quantum realm that are signaling the bad actors getting closer and closer to critical mass to be able to just obliterate all there was an attack recently out of China, I believe, that touched on a couple of very particular points within the quantum space. Maybe Sean, if you could just touch on some some examples of some of those attacks that are signaling it getting closer and closer.

Chris Versace  35:44

Yeah. I think that would be super helpful. Because, you know, we all hear about these attacks, as I was saying, but to the extent that, you know, we can listen for those, or pick up signs that, Oh, these are quantum attacks, and the volume of quantum attacks are accelerating, I think that would be helpful?

Sean Prescott  36:01

Yeah, I think the the, the important part here is to really listen to the manufacturers and the different you know, news channels that you know, they basically broadcast their information of, you know, when you join different scientific boards, and this can be, you know, on open social media as well. There, you know, subreddits out there, and different other platforms. If you want to stay informed, there are plenty of ways to do that. You don't have to, you know, be in some special science club to, you know, stay in the loop. So join those channels and then understand a bit more about, you know. Okay, so this manufacturer is creating this, oh, they've created a breakthrough. They've got, you know, 32 qubits right now that have been able to be, you know, you know, running in sequence with, you know, a certain time frame, which is a new achievement, etc. And then obviously, when you get these different, you know, streams about rent, quantum quantum storage, not just the quantum storage part, but the quantum compute part, right? The keyword is compute here, that is where you can really start to open. Need to open your eyes and sharpen your ears and listen to what's going on, because those are usually the experiments happening, especially when it comes to, you know, trying to break and crack. You know, different kind of algorithms there, because that is what they're trying to do, is sustain, kind of like, you know, with cold fusion, sustain the experiment long enough to make sure that you know, their settings and tunes have been set up correctly. Again. Quantum computers, they do need special infrastructure. They have to be cooled down. They're not something that you can, you know, just make smaller and put in your pocket like a phone. But that will evolve ultimately. And so staying informed with, let's say the science literature will keep you informed there and then, obviously, you know, join a hacker forum or a newsletter or something like that. Go to our website, where we post different kind of information and news releases on our products against, you know, systems that have perhaps been compromised, or algorithms that you know are deemed insecure, or new updates to the NIST standards, especially with the framework of Kyber coming along, happy to be there and help.

Chris Versace  38:04

Sean, you had me at join a hacker forum. I don't think any one of the three of us is going to do that, but good advice nonetheless. So So with that, Sean Prescott, founder and CTO James Young, CEO of scope technologies, thank you so much for joining us utterly fascinating conversation. And you know, we don't do this with everybody that we speak to, but we are going to reserve the right to call you back because it sounds like we're in the early stages of this, and it's something that we want to monitor its development and and get deeper into the weeds over time. So thank you very much, gentlemen.

Sean Prescott  38:41

Thank you so much. It was great. Thank you.

James Young  38:43

It was a pleasure. Happy to come back anytime, guys, thank you all very much.

Chris Versace  40:21

All right, Bob, all right. Lindsey, we just wrapped up our conversation with the folks at scope technology, and I got to tell you, between Sean Prescott and James Young, wow, my mind was blown on the topics of quantum and entropy. I am so glad that we actually came back during our conversation to talk a little more about what entropy is. I also say that as I reflect on the conversation, I'm kind of scared. You know what lists of what could come.

Lindsey Bell  41:13

Same, same. It's It's scary. Like you think the cyber attacks that we're seeing now are insane, but it's just going to get it's getting worse. And talking to them, they talked about this, this, what do they call it a quantum storm, and they linked it to the Y2k event. And it's just something that I haven't really heard a lot about. So that became a little bit scary. And then, you know, for me, again, layman here in the security space, I hear a lot about the blockchain and how that is, this encrypted network that's gonna, you know, be, be the solving product for everything. And they talked about how that has its own weak points, and that their quantum security, this entropy, can help even secure the blockchain more. So really enlightening conversation.

Chris Versace  42:02

Yeah, you know, as I think about it, you know, we all hear like, for example, about how the next Intel chip, the next Nvidia chip, the next Apple silicon chip, and it's how much more powerful and what it can do. And I think that, you know, the layperson doesn't sit back and say, Wow, what happens as that, as that accelerates and bad actors harness it for not good things. And I think this conversation is really kind of an eye opener on that front. Fortunate for us, we were able to talk with these guys at Scope Technologies, you know, ahead of this quantum storm. Bob. What do you think?

Bob Lang  42:43

Well I think what's interesting about the whole quantum storm thing is, if you relate it to its quantum computed competitor, which is classical computing, it it does things at a much more rapid pace and much more speed and velocity than classical computers. It's so it's all about getting information in the hands of the users much, much faster. So it opens up a door or a window for the hackers to come in there and disrupt a lot of things. And I think that when AI has come in and it's opened the door for quantum computing to take over for that classical computer computing, which is where, which what we which is what we're all used to right now, which is the battle that names like Palo Alto and CrowdStrike and Fortinet and some of these other public companies here in the United States are trying to battle and fight with, versus these, these cyber hackers and so forth and cyber crime. So I think it's a fascinating element at the going to the next level here with quantum, quantum computing.

Chris Versace  43:48

Yeah, I think, I think building on that, Bob, it's a little eye opening, because, you know, as we're having this conversation, we're, you know, kind of at the halfway point, maybe a little more of the September quarter earnings season, again, for the September 2024, quarter, to put a timestamp on it. And we've got a slew of cybersecurity companies yet to report. So it'll be really interesting to hear how many of them are starting to talk about this. I think that could be kind of a really nice confirming point for what scope is doing and what its opportunities are I will say this for folks who want to know more about Scope Technologies, please be sure to check the show notes. We'll have a link to the company's website. You can also see a link to their most recent investor presentation. I would encourage you to do your homework. Dig more into Scope. Dig more into the opportunities. And you know, let the buyer beware.