The Secret to Quantum Safety? Interoperability and Orchestration

The Hollywood script for a hypothetical quantum apocalypse is simple: a single, cataclysmic doomsday where all encryption instantly breaks. But that blockbuster narrative has leaders preparing for the wrong threat, budgeting for the wrong timeline, and ultimately, solving for the wrong problem.

Richu Channakeshava leads the quantum security initiative at Palo Alto Networks. Her experience shaping cryptography products at Cisco and A10 Networks drives why she believes leaders need to stop thinking about a single doomsday event and start planning for two very different timelines.

• Two clocks ticking: The first mistake, Channakeshava said, is conflating two very different events into one. "It’s one thing for the RSA algorithm to break, but it’s another thing entirely to build a scalable quantum computer that can decrypt a huge chunk of harvested data." Finding that one needle in a petabyte-sized haystack will require an investment ten times greater than what the industry has spent in the last three decades.

She decoupled the initial breakthrough—a vulnerability that research from Google Quantum AI suggests could be exploited with fewer than a million qubits,—from the ability to weaponize it at scale, which is likely five to ten years away. That distinction provides a realistic window for migration that aligns with NIST’s 2030 deprecation deadline.

Yet the actual speed of those clocks remains a source of intense industry debate, with skeptics pointing to persistent hardware hurdles while others, like IBM, maintain a more aggressive roadmap toward quantum advantage.

• A secret arms race: "If a nation-state gets there before private companies do, you won’t hear about it in the news," she warned. "What you will see are the consequences: critical data, stockpiled in 'Harvest Now, Decrypt Later' attacks, will be decrypted and sold on the dark web, highly targeted social engineering attacks, and assaults on critical infrastructure." The most dangerous moment will be a state secret, redefining the threat from a technological race into a geopolitical reality.