The honest answer to when companies should start preparing for the quantum security risks is that almost all of them are already late. This is not alarmism but a simple reflection of the fact that large organizations require a significant amount of time to migrate their cryptographic infrastructures, yet quantum hardware is advancing at a rapid pace.

The concern is not that a quantum computer will break your encryption the next day. Rather, the fact is that hostile parties are already recording encrypted communications today specifically for the purpose of decrypting them when sufficiently powerful quantum computing is available. This “harvest now, decrypt later” tactic implies that the time during which sensitive information is vulnerable is not dependent on the moment when quantum computers become capable but on how long such information is supposed to be kept secret. For numerous companies, this period has already started.

Understanding the Actual Timeline

Many security experts brush off quantum risk by referring to the current limitations of hardware, and in fact, they are not incorrect when they say that today’s quantum computers are incapable of breaking RSA encryption. The devices that exist at the moment are noisy, prone to errors, and not even close to the size required to execute Shor’s algorithm on production encryption keys. However, hardware capabilities are advancing at a pace that most enterprise security planning cycles fail to accommodate.

The more important question is not “can quantum computers break encryption today?” but rather “when will they be able to, and how long will our migration take?” Most trustworthy predictions by organizations such as NIST, the NSA, and leading research institutions indicate that quantum computers capable of cracking cryptography will be available between 2030 and 2035, although some evaluations suggest an earlier date. The complete post, quantum cryptography transition for a big company that involves consulting systems, changing protocols, testing substitutes, and rolling out the changes across the infrastructure usually takes five to ten years.

What “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” Actually Means for Your Business

The harvest now, decrypt later threat is an issue that merits far more discussion in enterprise security circles than it currently receives, as it completely resets the risk timeline commensurate with the level of risk exposure.

Traditional cybersecurity framework considers encryption a fully, solved issue such that if the data is encrypted and the key is secure, then the data is safe. Quantum computing is going to undermine that assumption for any data whose confidentiality will be maintained long enough for a capable quantum machine to emerge.

State, sponsored hackers and highly, skilled criminal groups are already using this technique. They are intercepting and saving encrypted communications, financial transactions, proprietary research, and government data, which they will be able to unlock once quantum computers give them the decryption power. It goes without saying that the targets aren’t random adversaries are deliberately picking data that even years later will have intelligence or financial value.

What this means for companies is that the logical question is not only “Can our data be secure today?” but more importantly, “Does our data need to be secure in 2032, 2035, or even longer?” Any entity that is dealing with trade secrets, long-term contracts, sensitive customer data, or regulated information must see this as a current risk management issue rather than a future state concern.

Where to Start: Cryptographic Inventory and Risk Prioritization

For most organizations, the very first practical move should be a cryptographic inventory, a detailed and systematic audit of what systems, applications, and data flows are dependent on encryption standards that could eventually be exposed by quantum attacks. It sounds simple; however, it is usually more complicated than what security teams anticipate. Cryptographic dependencies exist everywhere in the enterprise infrastructure, and many of them are not documented properly or at all. These dependencies can be TLS configurations, certificate management, VPN protocols, database encryption, and applications, to name a few.

After the inventory is done, the next step is risk prioritization. Firstly, not all cryptographic assets carry the same urgency. The data that is protected using systems with a short confidentiality lifespan, for example, a retail transaction that is only sensitive for 90 days, is of a lesser priority than the data that is protected through systems of intellectual property, long-term financial records, or customer data that is subjected to multi, year regulatory retention requirements. Secondly, putting together a migration roadmap that plans the sequence of the remediation by the actual level of risk is not only more feasible but also less costly than upgrading everything at the same time.

This is also the stage where many organizations find that engaging external expertise pays off significantly. The intersection of quantum computing knowledge and enterprise security architecture is a specialized skill set, and firms providing enterprise quantum consulting can run these assessments with the domain depth that most internal security teams haven’t had reason to develop yet. Getting the inventory and prioritization right at the start prevents expensive rework later in the migration process.

The Cost of Waiting Versus the Cost of Starting

The argument for initiating post-quantum security planning is now so clear that it can be summarized in one simple comparison: an early start allows a company to spread the cost of the migration over a multi-year roadmap, gradually develop in-house expertise, and finish the transition prior to the availability of quantum hardware capable of attacking. On the other hand, waiting to do so means squeezing that same work into a much shorter timeframe under regulatory pressure, probably at higher cost and with greater operational disruption.

Organizations that have undergone large-scale cryptographic changes such as moving from SHA, 1 to SHA-2, or deprecating TLS 1.0, already know how much these migrations can drag down operations even in perfectly normal circumstances. Doing that while time is short and one is under the pressure of meeting a compliance deadline is significantly more painful and expensive.

Those security teams and IT leaders who are the first to get their post, quantum roadmaps together are not scaring people. They are just following proper risk management logic applied to a threat that has a predictable trajectory and a preparation time so limited that it hardly allows for any delay.