A Vienna team has shown how to send encrypted data to a quantum computer. But a stable and powerful quantum computer remains a long way off.

Imagine, for a moment, that the promise of powerful, super-fast quantum computers has materialized. In the beginning at least, there will only be a few of them, housed in special facilities.

Users who want to harness their quantum capabilities will need to send data to a remote location, allow the computer to do its magic and send back the results. Quantum physicists have now shown that there's a way to do this that's absolutely securely - meaning the remote quantum computer will never understand the true data even while it is manipulating it.