Ahead of World Quantum Readiness Day (17th September), an expert explains why waiting isn't an option

[ZPM54]

Ahead of World Quantum Readiness Day on September 17th, Arizona State University's Michel Kinsy, director of the university's Secure, Trusted, and Assured Microelectronics Center, explained in a Q&A why organizations can't simply wait until large-scale quantum computers actually arrive before preparing. Kinsy said moving to quantum-safe cryptography is a multiyear effort even once new standards exist, pointing to the decade it took organizations to fully migrate away from the older SHA-1 algorithm once it was found vulnerable as a historical precedent for how long these transitions genuinely take

Kinsy explained that quantum computers specifically threaten public-key cryptography systems like RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography, which depend on mathematical problems that are extremely difficult for classical computers but that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor's algorithm could solve efficiently. He stressed that symmetric encryption, which protects most stored and transmitted data, remains much less affected and can stay secure with larger key sizes, meaning quantum computing doesn't suddenly make all classical encryption obsolete at once, the immediate concern is specifically the public-key systems underpinning secure browsing, authentication and digital signatures

On harvest now, decrypt later, Kinsy called it a real and underappreciated threat, since organizations holding data that needs to stay confidential for a decade or more, government agencies, healthcare systems, financial institutions, genomic data holders, are exposed today even though no attacker can exploit that stolen data until quantum hardware eventually catches up. He noted AI is affecting the picture on multiple fronts at once, accelerating quantum research itself while also being used to search for weaknesses in cryptographic algorithms, and creating an entirely new category of long-lived sensitive data, training data and proprietary model weights, that itself needs quantum-safe protection. Curious what people think organizations should actually prioritize first given this multiyear timeline, identifying where encryption is embedded across their own systems, or waiting for clearer guidance on which specific post-quantum algorithms will prove most robust once real-world implementation flaws get identified

World Quantum Readiness Day, Sept. 17: What Are Tomorrowwww.newswise.com

World Quantum Readiness Daywww.digicert.com