Preparing Embedded Systems for the Post-Quantum Security Transition

September 08, 2026

Blog

For years, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) was viewed as a future concern: a problem to solve once quantum computers became powerful enough to threaten today's public-key encryption methods. That perspective is rapidly changing. Long-lived embedded systems, evolving cybersecurity requirements and the risk that sensitive data is already being collected for future decryption are making quantum readiness a present-day design concern.

The conversation around PQC is no longer focused solely on when a cryptographically relevant quantum computer will arrive. Instead, it has shifted to a more urgent question: how do organizations design products today that will remain secure through the PQC transition for the next decade or longer? That challenge is particularly significant because design choices made today can remain locked into products for many years after deployment.

The concept behind the risk has been understood for decades. In 1994, mathematician Peter Shor demonstrated that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the mathematical foundations behind the widely used public-key cryptographic systems, RSA and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Today, quantum computers cannot perform these attacks at a practical scale, but the mathematics is well established. Once cryptographically relevant quantum computers become available, many of the public-key systems that secure today's digital infrastructure will become vulnerable.