Forget the AI Armageddon—quantum computing is the real threat to digital security | Tech Radar

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Forget the AI Armageddon—quantum computing is the real threat to digital security

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Artificial intelligence dominates headlines as the technology most likely to reshape society—and potentially destabilize it. But while policymakers and security teams debate AI ethics, a potentially more devastating force is advancing in relative silence: quantum computing.

Google's Willow chip, unveiled in late 2024, completed a benchmark calculation in under five minutes that would take the world's fastest supercomputer ten septillion years. The quantum era is no longer a decade away—it's arriving in stages, right now.

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The concern isn’t hypothetical. The accelerating convergence of AI, cloud computing, and early-stage quantum capabilities is already reshaping the threat landscape in ways most organizations are unprepared for.

The result is a growing “quantum clock” hanging over corporate America, one that is ticking down faster than legacy security models can adapt. This means increasing pressure on organizations to implement quantum-safe measures now, not later.

At its core, the issue is encryption. Nearly all modern digital security—everything from financial transactions and healthcare records to government communications—relies on cryptographic methods that assume attackers are limited by classical computing power.

Quantum computers, once sufficiently mature, break that assumption entirely. Algorithms that would take today’s fastest supercomputers thousands of years to crack could, in theory, be solved in minutes.

What makes this especially urgent is that adversaries aren't waiting for quantum maturity. Nation-state actors are already executing "harvest now, decrypt later" campaigns—intercepting and stockpiling encrypted data today, banking on future quantum systems to crack it open.

Intelligence agencies have warned that sensitive data with a long shelf life—trade secrets, defense communications, patient records—may already be compromised, years before a quantum computer ever touches it.

Today's digital infrastructure is already porous. Years of breaches, credential theft, and supply-chain compromises mean attackers routinely begin from a position inside the environment.

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When quantum-enabled decryption becomes practical, it won't arrive in a vacuum—it will land in an ecosystem already riddled with hidden access paths and dormant footholds.

This risk is amplified by how modern computing actually works.

Most organizations are no longer running a single generation of technology. Instead, they operate a complex mix of legacy systems, containerized applications, serverless functions, and increasingly, AI agents that move autonomously across environments.

These workloads span multiple cloud providers, on-premises infrastructure, and hundreds of Saa S platforms stitched together by APIs, identities, and network connections few organizations fully understand.

This interconnected cloud environment is a constantly shifting web of dependencies, permissions, and data flows.

Security failures rarely occur because one system is unprotected; they happen at the seams— Recent incidents illustrate this: a Saa S integration drift that silently exposed customer data across trust boundaries, or an automation platform vulnerability that gave attackers lateral movement through orchestration workflows.

These aren't hypothetical. They're the kinds of gaps adversaries exploit daily.

Regulators have taken notice. Frameworks like CISA's Zero Trust Maturity Model 2.0 now mandate runtime proof of zero trust enforcement, not just policy documentation.

The EU's DORA and NIS2 directives require segmentation and full-path encryption. These aren't aspirational targets—they're compliance deadlines that most multi-cloud environments aren't prepared to meet.

AI accelerates this fragility. Autonomous AI tools now traverse systems at machine speed, chaining together actions across databases, APIs, and services in seconds.

A compromised agent—whether through stolen credentials, manipulated prompts, or poisoned training data—can escalate privileges and exfiltrate data across cloud boundaries before a human analyst even triages the first alert.

This is where the industry’s traditional mental model breaks down.

The perimeter is gone, but security hasn’t caught up

For decades, cybersecurity has been organized around the idea of a perimeter: trusted systems on the inside, threats on the outside. But in cloud and multicloud environments, that boundary no longer exists.

Every workload is potentially exposed because the threats live within the network fabric between those workloads. Every connection is a potential attack path. Even the infrastructure designed to enforce boundaries—VPNs, gateways, edge devices—has increasingly become a primary target for exploitation.

First, organizations must gain real visibility into east-west traffic: the lateral movement between workloads that attackers use to escalate privileges and reach high-value assets.

Most security tooling still focuses on north-south traffic—what enters and exits the environment—while missing the internal pathways where breaches actually unfold.

Second, security intent must be expressed in terms that reflect how modern systems operate. Static controls built around IP addresses and fixed infrastructure fail in environments dominated by ephemeral workloads and dynamic scaling.

Instead, access decisions must be tied to workload identity, function, and behavior regardless of where that workload happens to run.

Taken together, these capabilities define what the industry is beginning to call a cloud-native security fabric: a unifying layer that provides continuous visibility into east-west traffic, enforces consistent policy across every cloud and data center, and constrains lateral movement—without requiring organizations to rip and replace their existing infrastructure.

When paired with zero-trust principles applied directly to workloads—not just users—this model offers a way to contain breaches even when attackers gain an initial foothold.

None of this eliminates the quantum threat. But it changes the equation.

Quantum computing may eventually break today’s encryption. Complexity, however, is already breaking today’s defenses. Organizations that wait for quantum-safe cryptography standards while ignoring architectural weaknesses risk being compromised long before quantum computers reach maturity.

In August 2024, NIST finalized its first three post-quantum encryption standards—a landmark step. Organizations should absolutely begin planning their cryptographic migration. But adopting new algorithms alone is not enough. Complexity is already breaking today's defenses.

Organizations that pursue quantum-safe cryptography while ignoring the architectural weaknesses underneath it are reinforcing the walls of a building with a crumbling foundation.

The real danger isn’t an overnight “quantum apocalypse.” It’s a slow-burn failure—where harvested data, unchecked lateral movement, and unmanaged AI systems converge into a security crisis that feels sudden only in hindsight.

The path forward starts now: audit your encryption posture, map the lateral pathways through your cloud environments, and begin migrating to quantum-safe standards.

The organizations that will weather the quantum transition are those building security into the network fabric itself—where trust is enforced continuously, at the workload level, across every environment.

Because while AI may change how we work, quantum computing could change whether our digital foundations can be trusted at all.

This article was produced as part of Tech Radar Pro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Tech Radar Pro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

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Key Takeaways

• Forget the AI Armageddon—quantum computing is the real threat to digital security

• When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission

• (Image credit: Shutterstock) (Image credit: Shutterstock)

• Artificial intelligence dominates headlines as the technology most likely to reshape society—and potentially destabilize it

• Google's Willow chip, unveiled in late 2024, completed a benchmark calculation in under five minutes that would take the world's fastest supercomputer ten septillion years