'We expect toward the start of 2022 or so, we will select a small number of them to begin being standardized,' Dustin Moody, a NIST mathematician working on the effort, said at an IBM cryptography meeting in March. It's winnowed 82 initial contributions down to a group of seven final candidates for two encryption tasks: exchanging digital keys and adding digital signatures. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology is spearheading the global effort to find post-quantum cryptography algorithms that will be fast and trustworthy. So are IonQ, PsiQuantum, Xanadu, Silicon Quantum Computing and other startups. Other tech giants, such as Honeywell, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, are racing to build the first powerful quantum computers. At this month's Google I/O developer conference, the search giant unveiled plans for a new quantum computing center that will employ hundreds of people with the goal of building a practical quantum computer by 2029. Quantum computing is the darling of the industry, and it's attracted millions of dollars in investment. Not only are today's communications vulnerable, but quantum computers later could crack the digital signatures that ensure the integrity of updates to apps, browsers, operating systems and other software, opening a path for malware. It's a colossal effort, but it has to be done.

It's an extraordinarily complex change that's on par with fixing Y2K bugs or upgrading internet communications from IPv4 to IPv6. But most of the burden for quantum-safe encryption rests on the shoulders of businesses, governments and cloud computing services that must design and install the technology. Quantum-safe encryption will come into your life through upgraded laptops, phones, web browsers and other products. Some of those companies, including IBM and Thales, have already begun offering products protected by what's called post-quantum cryptography. Some companies have embarked on an effort to create, test and adopt new encryption algorithms impervious to quantum computers.

The computing industry is well aware of this potential vulnerability. But data surreptitiously gathered now could still be sensitive when more powerful quantum computers come online in a few years. Today's quantum computers are too rudimentary to do so. That'll lay bare private communications, company data and military secrets. Quantum computers, if they mature enough, will be able to crack much of today's encryption.

Quantum break crack status