Harvest Now, Decrypt Later: The Security Risk That Creates Immediate Demand

The strategic relevance of post-quantum security does not depend on the existence today of quantum computers capable of breaking public-key cryptography at industrial scale. The immediate risk is temporal. Encrypted government files, financial records, healthcare data, telecom traffic, industrial secrets and critical infrastructure information can be collected now, stored by hostile actors and potentially decrypted later if cryptographically relevant quantum computers become available. This “harvest now, decrypt later” model turns quantum security into a present operational problem because many categories of sensitive data must remain confidential for years or decades, while the migration of cryptographic systems, suppliers, protocols and infrastructure will itself require long planning cycles.