El Kaafarani, Pqshield: “With quantum computers nothing remains safe forever”

“Post-quantum cryptography refers to encryption methods based on mathematics that are still robust and difficult to crack even for quantum computers,” explains El Kaafarani. The problem, he adds, is that with advances in the quantum industry, “the encryption methods we use today are increasingly at risk of being broken in the next five to 10 years,” while confidential data often has a much longer life cycle.

Hence the rush of governments and large technology companies towards new standards. Pqshield, El Kaafarani recalls, worked with the American government on the development of new encryption standards and had co-authors in all the schemes selected by the United States. “2025 to 2035 is the window for the industry to transition all cybersecurity infrastructure to the new standards,” he says.

For the individual user, the risk is less visible but no less concrete. “We should all be worried.” The point is the model known as “harvest now, decrypt later”: hostile actors can collect encrypted data today that they cannot yet read, store and decrypt in the future when they have the tools to do so. “Nothing is safe forever,” he summarizes.

This does not mean, however, that citizens must intervene directly on their digital security. “As end users we don’t have much to do,” El Kaafarani clarifies. The transition needs to happen further up the supply chain: semiconductors, networks, device manufacturers, cloud services, telecoms, finance, defense, critical infrastructure.

The positive sign, according to El Kaafarani, is that the topic has now entered the mainstream debate. He cites Apple, Google and Cloudflare among the players who have already announced compliance paths or migration deadlines. “We went from a theoretical attack to developed standards, then to mandated standards. Now everyone is talking about it,” he concludes.