QUANTUM THREAT T IMELINE REPORT 2022 - DECEMBER 2022

The urgency to initiate and complete the transition to quantum-safe cryptography depends on the security requirements and the risk appetite of individual organizations and can be determined in terms of three simple parameters: • the shelf-life time: the number of years the data should be protected for; • the migration time: the number of years needed to safely migrate the systems protecting that i. [...] The respondents seem also to have a wide range of opinions when it comes to the effect of recent events—such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine—on the pace of development of quantum computers, including the option of a speed-up due to the perceived strategic usefulness of quantum computers. [...] The result of this approach is shown in the bottom graph of Figure 7, along with the heatmap introduced in the top graph as backdrop to remind the reader of the variance in the opinions. [...] In general, these can be regarded as attempts at making the best possible use of the freedom in the encoding of quantum information and of the specific properties of the physical systems used to encode it, including the specific noise, with the goal of attaining a robust and efficient encoding. [...] The challenges the world economy and the financial markets are facing in a phase of recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic likely play a role both in the actual dynamics of investments and in the expectations of our respondents about the level of investments.