G7 Warns Quantum Threat Demands Action as Crypto Industry Weighs Fixes

In brief

• The G7 says organizations should begin migrating to post-quantum cryptography now.
• Attackers can collect encrypted data today and decrypt it if sufficiently powerful quantum computers emerge.
• Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana developers are already testing defenses against the threat.

The G7 is urging governments and businesses to prepare for quantum-enabled cyberattacks now, warning that migration could take years and that sensitive data is already at risk.

In a new report, the cybersecurity working group of the Group of Seven, better known as the G7—a forum comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States—called quantum computing a security and economic threat to public and private organizations, not just critical infrastructure operators.

“Although the exact timeline is uncertain, several recent advances suggest an anticipation of the development of quantum computers able to break widely used public-key cryptography mechanisms and threaten the security of digital infrastructures,” the group wrote.

The group urged organizations to adopt post-quantum cryptography, or PQC, to protect against classical and quantum attacks. Without it, data stolen and stored today could later be decrypted by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, which could also break digital signatures, enable impersonation, and expose companies and their supply chains.