Today marks World Quantum Day, a day promoting public awareness of quantum science and technology. Quantum technologies have been the topic of much discussion in the security industry, yet many organizations remain unprepared for this encroaching future. 

When it comes to preparing, many conversations focus on the arrival time of quantum risk. While crucial, the arrival time is not the only piece security leaders should consider. 

“On World Quantum Day, and every day, it’s important to realize too much of the conversation is still centered on when quantum risk will fully arrive, and not enough on how long migration actually takes,” said Rebecca Krauthamer, CEO and Co-Founder of QuSecure, a post-quantum cryptography software solution company. “That is the real operational risk. The organizations that wait for certainty before they start delay the one thing that will give them real clarity: Hands-on experience migrating their systems.” 

Krauthamer elaborates on these risks, diving into three quantum realities that security leaders should acknowledge. 

3 Quantum Realities Security Leaders Need to Confront

1. The Timeline to a Quantum Future is Shrinking, Not Growing

Waiting until there is a universal agreement on quantum risk arrival to begin migration is ill-advised. Critical infrastructure timelines from organizations like Google indicate that timelines are shrinking, not growing. 

While the risk uncertainty is important, Krauthamer argues that a more prevalent uncertainty for organizations is how long it will take to: 

• Identify dependencies
• Prioritize remediation
• Execute change across environments

2. Discovery Must Accelerate Action

Cryptographic discovery, inventory and strategy do not need to be mostly completed before remediation begins, Krauthamer asserts, as this approach may: 

• Inhibit progress
• Consume budgets
• Create a false sense of preparedness

Instead, migration work should be used to inform inventory, reveal dependencies and improve prioritization. Discovery shouldn’t postpone migration, it should accelerate it.

3. Claude Mythos Is the New Normal

The recent conversations surrounding Claude Mythos have revealed that cyberthreats are accelerating and becoming more challenging to defend with inflexible architectures. When it comes to post-quantum migration, Krauthamer argues that organizations cannot depend on security models in which each cryptographic change demands a long redevelopment cycle. 

Crypto-agility is now a requirement to keep pace with the evolving cyber threat landscape. 

Security Leaders Share Insights on World Quantum Day

Chaim Mazal, Chief AI and Security Officer at Gigamon: 

Cybersecurity has reached an inflection point. While defenders are already contending with AI-powered attacks, security leaders now must prepare for quantum-driven risks. The next 12 months will be critical for every security team, because the problem is no longer theoretical: attackers are actively harvesting encrypted data with the expectation that quantum computing will make it readable. This “harvest now, decrypt later” strategy is a wake up call for every security team, especially as 35% of organizations globally report that encrypted traffic represents their biggest breach risk, and 87% say they are concerned about the rise of harvest now, decrypt later attacks, according to new data from the soon to be published 2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey of 1,000 security leaders.

Despite these concerns, a dangerous assumption persists: 76% of organizations still believe their encrypted data is inherently secure. While many organizations know quantum may disrupt their encryption strategies in the years ahead, few are meaningfully preparing for it. That makes post-quantum readiness a defining issue for cybersecurity in the next year. The organizations that treat this as a present-day priority, focusing on audits and asset inventory, modernizing security architecture, and adopting more adaptive, zero trust approaches to gain the visibility needed, will be far better positioned to navigate a post-quantum landscape.

Aaron Fulkerson, CEO at OPAQUE: 

Every major technology shift follows the same pattern: the capability arrives first, the trust layer catches up later. The internet needed HTTPS before commerce could scale. Cloud needed compliance frameworks before enterprises moved critical workloads. AI is going through that same transition now, and quantum will be no different.

Quantum computing will break the cryptographic foundations we rely on today. That’s not theoretical; it’s a matter of time. The question isn’t if, it’s whether your infrastructure is designed to adapt when it happens.

We’re already seeing leading organizations plan against that timeline. Google, a leader in quantum research, has publicly set 2029 as the target for quantum readiness, meaning the window to act is shorter than most realize. The mistake is treating this as a future migration problem. It’s an architectural decision you make now, and World Quantum Day is a great reminder of that.

Those who build cryptographic agility and verifiability guarantees into their systems today won’t be reacting under pressure later. They’ll already be operating in a model where trust isn’t assumed — it’s proven.

Suman Sharma, Head of PAM Engineering at Ping Identity:

As quantum innovation accelerates and we look ahead to its transformative potential, it’s becoming clear that the future is arriving faster than expected. Google’s decision to accelerate its timeline to 2029 underscores a growing industry-wide recognition that the window to prepare for a post-quantum world is narrowing. The internet’s encryption backbone is already undergoing one of the decade’s most significant transformations, with hybrid quantum-resistant standards rolling out across browsers and core infrastructure. While high-security sectors are moving toward fully quantum-safe deployments, much of the broader ecosystem remains in transition. Now is the time for organizations to perform a thorough inventory of all quantum-vulnerable cryptographic algorithms in their code, deployed infrastructure, key stores, databases, and stored data to accurately assess the scope of impact, and start building a detailed plan to migrate to post-quantum (quantum-resistant) cryptography.