White House drastically shortens deadline for dropping quantum-vulnerable crypto

- Quantum computers, once powerful enough, could break the public-key cryptography (e.g., RSA, ECC) that secures nearly all modern digital communications, from banking to government data. - To prevent that, NIST has spent years standardizing "post-quantum cryptography" (PQC) — new algorithms designed to resist both classical and quantum attacks. - The original US government deadline for federal agencies to complete the migration to PQC was in the 2030s. This new executive order compresses that timeline significantly, requiring much faster adoption. - The order signals an urgent assessment that quantum threat development may be advancing faster than previously expected, putting national security data at risk of "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks (where adversaries collect encrypted data today to decrypt once quantum computers arrive).