If you’re looking for a break from all the AI related news, how about a trip down memory lane?  Remember when quantum computing was the thing all the pundits were talking about? Despite media attention shifting away over the last few years, the potential threat to cryptographic standards posed by quantum computing hasn’t gone away.

The Treasury Department hasn’t forgotten either, and to that end they have announced the development of a Quantum-Readiness Task Force to investigate ways to migrate financial institutions to new, tougher cryptographic tools.

While present-day quantum computers can not break modern encryption standards, the rollout of quantum-resistant encryption is still important today due to the risk of harvesting attacks which aim to store data until it can be decrypted at a later date. Despite this risk, it’s worth noting the Treasury Department’s roadmap for financial institutions extends out to 2035, so it’s clear they anticipate this to be a process that will take some time to fully complete.

Quantum-resistant computing standards are still new, with NIST publishing the first in their series in 2024, so it is likely that we will see changes to the roadmap as both quantum computing, and the countermeasures against it, continue to develop. For now though, as the article suggests, it may be a good idea to begin identifying where your organization uses cryptography and how you can best mitigate the quantum threat.