Study: AI Could Speed Quantum Threats — And Help Build Defenses

Insider Brief

• A new analysis argues that AI could accelerate quantum threats to encryption while helping organizations prepare their defenses.
• Data collected in encrypted form today could remain vulnerable to future quantum attacks, making information that needs years of protection a priority.
• Automated tools could help organizations find and replace vulnerable encryption, while quantum methods for detecting cyberattacks remain experimental.

Artificial intelligence could hasten quantum attacks on encryption while helping organizations prepare for them, according to a new analysis that calls for treating the technologies as a single cybersecurity challenge.

The paper, published in the Journal of Quantum Information Science by Troy Coienth Troublefield, of Capitol Technology University, proposes that AI’s growing role in quantum development will make it harder for businesses and governments to plan around a distant, fixed deadline for replacing vulnerable cryptography. At the same time, AI could help security teams locate that cryptography across sprawling computer systems and organize its replacement.

The immediate concern is that attackers could collect encrypted communications today and save them for a future quantum computer capable of reading them, according to the study. Organizations that wait until such a machine exists could protect new communications while leaving previously intercepted material exposed.