Quantum Computing: Federal Actions Needed to Prepare for Emerging Cyber Threat

Filed 2h ago · Via GAO · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Onion Capers

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Penarc · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

GAO reports that a future quantum computer sufficiently advanced to crack standard encryption, a so-called cryptographically relevant quantum computer, could emerge as soon as the 2030s, and that none of the 24 major federal agencies GAO reviewed have fully completed the preparatory steps needed to migrate to quantum-resistant cryptography.

The gaps include incomplete inventories of vulnerable systems, no clear funding plans, and no testing plans for new algorithms, problems GAO attributes partly to a shortage of in-house cryptography expertise.

GAO issued 89 recommendations across 23 agencies in the sensitive version of this report; twelve agencies agreed, two partially agreed, seven neither agreed nor disagreed, and one disagreed with three of its four recommendations, while GAO stood by every one of them.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A ten-to-twenty year warning is the easiest kind to ignore, right up until it isn't, and that's exactly the trap here. Seven agencies couldn't even be bothered to agree or disagree with fixing it, which is its own kind of answer. The clock on this one doesn't care whether the paperwork gets filed on time.

Source: Read the original at GAO → Scored: Onion Capers · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

Read it scored.

Every story, every clown, every kazoo — in your pocket. Music plays automatically. Regret is optional.

GET IT ON iOS GET IT ON ANDROID

OR FOLLOW THE DESK ON BLUESKY →