Google has recently issued a stark warning explaining how the world, including governments, financial institutions, and technology providers are hurling towards growing cybersecurity threats.
The tech giant in a blogpost revealed quantum computers pose a significant threat to “current cryptographic standards”, culminating in the “ imminent apocalypse” that could hack internet security sooner than later.
“The encryption currently used to keep your information confidential and secure could easily be broken by a large-scale quantum computer in coming years,” Alphabet-owned company said.
For years, the computer scientists have voiced concerns over the grave risks posed by workable quantum computers as they could easily destroy encryption and threaten people’s privacy.
Given the occurrence of developments in quantum computing at breakneck speed, by 2029 quantum computer hackers could break most existing encryption systems.
Therefore, Google is planning to prioritise post-quantum cryptography migration for authentication services which is an important component of online security and digital signature migrations.
“By doing this, we hope to provide the clarity and urgency needed to accelerate digital transitions not only for Google, but also across the industry,” Google said.
Google also urged the actors across the technology landscape to protect sensitive data by migrating it to more advanced encryption systems now, aiming to avoid any kind of data breach.
In 2025, the National Cybersecurity Centre, the UK’s cybersecurity, also urged organizations to protect their systems against quantum hackers by 2035.
Leonie Mueck, formerly the chief product officer of Riverlane, said, “National security documents from 1920 are not relevant today. But stuff from 10 years ago is much more relevant, and should not get into the wrong hands in the future. You need to have classified documents that are classified today in a way that a quantum computer in 10 years won’t be able to decrypt them.”