The Harvest Now, Decrypt Later Threat and Quantum computing: What we must do today?

In this podcast we discuss the "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" (HNDL) threat, a critical and immediate cyber security risk where adversaries, primarily nation-states and sophisticated cybercrime groups, are actively stockpiling encrypted data today, anticipating future decryption by quantum computers. This data, particularly long-lived sensitive information like medical records, intellectual property, and government secrets, will become vulnerable when cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) capable of breaking current encryption (like RSA and ECC) become available. Organisations are urged to immediately begin migrating to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), a complex and phased process requiring crypto-agility and re-encryption for critical data, as highlighted by efforts from cloud providers like AWS in preparing their infrastructure and offering tools for customers. The urgency stems from the silent nature of HNDL and the compressed timeline for securing data against a future threat that is being actively enabled now.