The Race To Avert Quantum Computing Threat With New Encryption Standards - The World News Portable Info

The Race to Avert Quantum Computing Threat With New Encryption Standards The World News | April 2026

To understand the urgency, one must first understand the vulnerability.

—the point at which a "cryptographically relevant" quantum computer becomes powerful enough to break the standard encryption (RSA and ECC) that currently protects everything from banking transactions to classified state secrets. Palo Alto Networks

Classical computers process information in bits—a binary state of either 0 or 1. A quantum computer leverages qubits, which can exist in a superposition of 0 and 1 simultaneously, and exploit quantum entanglement. This allows a sufficiently powerful quantum machine to run Peter Shor’s 1994 algorithm, which solves the prime factorization problem exponentially faster than any known classical method. The Race to Avert Quantum Computing Threat With

“Every HTTPS session, every VPN tunnel, every encrypted email sent in the last five years is potentially a time capsule that will open in 2030 or 2035,” warns Mikhail Borodin, a cyber-policy analyst at the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). “If you are a diplomat, a journalist, or a CEO, your past conversations are not safe.”

To counter this, international bodies have finalized and begun mandating a transition to —algorithms designed to be secure against both classical and quantum attacks.

“We chose these not because they are the fastest or the smallest, but because we have the most confidence in their resistance after years of attempted cryptanalysis,” explains Dustin Moody, a mathematician leading the NIST PQC project. A quantum computer leverages qubits, which can exist

The math is ready. The standards are chosen. The only question is whether humanity can move fast enough to outrun its own invention.

May 13, 2026

The winners are a fascinating departure from the factorization trapdoor of RSA. They rely on different branches of mathematics that are believed—though not yet proven—to resist quantum attack: “If you are a diplomat, a journalist, or

The global response is being coordinated not by a single tech giant, but by a relatively obscure American federal agency: NIST.

In hushed conference rooms at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland, and in the gleaming quantum labs of Shenzhen and Zurich, a silent, high-stakes race is underway. The finish line? A complete overhaul of the internet’s security architecture—known as Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC)—before a “cryptographically relevant” quantum computer (CRQC) arrives.

As of May 2026, the global cybersecurity landscape has reached a critical "event horizon". For years, the threat of quantum computers breaking modern encryption was a theoretical concern for the mid-2030s. However, recent breakthroughs in 2026 have —the moment quantum processors become powerful enough to render current digital security obsolete. The 2026 Breakthroughs: Why the Urgency?