Quantum Cryptography Moves From Lab to Network — and India's Timeline Question
Quantum key distribution has moved out of the laboratory and onto commercial fibre. For most Indian organisations, though, the more pressing issue is a simpler one, and it does not require a quantum computer to exist yet.
Harvest now, decrypt later
An adversary can capture encrypted traffic today and store it until a machine capable of breaking that encryption exists. Any data with a long confidentiality life — health records, legal files, state communications — is already exposed to this.
What to do this year
- Inventory where long-lived sensitive data actually travels.
- Track the post-quantum cryptography standards and your vendors' support timelines.
- Build crypto-agility so algorithms can be swapped without re-architecting.
Post-quantum migration is an inventory problem long before it is a mathematics problem.
