April 14th marks World Quantum Day — an annual global initiative held on a date that pays homage to Planck’s constant (4.14 × 10⁻³⁴ joule-seconds), the fundamental quantity at the very heart of quantum mechanics. First launched in 2022 with backing from scientists and institutions across more than 65 countries, World Quantum Day was created to promote public awareness and excitement around quantum science and its rapidly expanding technological applications. In 2026, the observance carries more weight than ever. We are no longer in the era of purely theoretical promise — quantum computing, quantum networking, and post-quantum cryptography are actively moving from the lab into enterprise roadmaps, government strategies, and commercial products, making this year’s celebration a genuine inflection point for the industry.
The significance of this moment cannot be overstated. Quantum technologies are poised to reshape everything from drug discovery and materials science to financial modeling and national cybersecurity posture. At the same time, the urgency around post-quantum cryptography is accelerating, with organizations racing to harden their infrastructure against a “harvest now, decrypt later” threat landscape that is very much present today — not some distant future scenario. The race between quantum capability and quantum-safe security is one of the defining technology stories of our time, and World Quantum Day 2026 serves as a timely reminder that the window for preparation is narrowing fast.
To mark the occasion, VMblog reached out to a number of industry experts to gather their perspectives on where quantum technology stands today, what breakthroughs are capturing attention, and what organizations need to be thinking about as quantum moves closer to mainstream reality. Here is what they had to say.
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David Sequino, Co-Founder & CEO of OmniTrust
The most immediate impact of quantum computing is not what it will solve, but what it will expose. Modern public key cryptography, which underpins everything from secure web traffic to software updates, depends on mathematical problems that are effectively unsolvable for classical computers. Systems such as RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve cryptography are built on that assumption. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm would break it.
While such machines are still years away, the risk is already present because adversaries can capture encrypted data today and decrypt it later when quantum capabilities mature. For long-lived sensitive data in areas like defense, healthcare and critical infrastructure, that threat is immediate and consequential. In response, NIST has spent the past decade developing post-quantum cryptography, selecting initial standards in 2024 – including ML-KEM and ML-DSA. Migration is now underway – with U.S. government systems expected to begin transitioning by 2030 – leaving a narrow window to re-engineer global cryptographic infrastructure at scale.
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Jon France, CISO, ISC2
Quantum computing is often framed as a single breakthrough moment, but the reality is more nuanced. We are not heading toward a world of only quantum systems, but one where quantum, classical computing and AI each play distinct roles depending on the problem set. The real challenge is not just the hardware, where we are seeing rapid progress, but aligning applications, software and infrastructure in a way that delivers meaningful outcomes in a sure manner. Until those pieces come together, a commercially available quantum computer will remain powerful, but highly specialized.
Where this becomes real is security. The timeline to Q Day is compressing, and the risk of harvest now decrypt later attacks is already forcing organizations to think differently about protecting sensitive, long-term data. Quantum computers will impact current cryptography that is used in everything from browsers to cars to the systems we rely on every day. For organizations holding such data, the shift to quantum-resilient cryptography should already be underway. The science can feel almost like magic, but the impact is very real, and this is one of the highest stakes shifts in cybersecurity in a generation. The organizations that start preparing early will be the ones that avoid disruption later. Quantum computing is not today’s breach risk but failing to prepare for post-quantum cryptography could become tomorrow’s governance failure.
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Chaim Mazal, CAISO at Gigamon
Cybersecurity has reached an inflection point. While defenders are already contending with AI-powered attacks, security leaders now must prepare for quantum-driven risks. The next 12 months will be critical for every security team, because the problem is no longer theoretical: attackers are actively harvesting encrypted data with the expectation that quantum computing will make it readable. This “harvest now, decrypt later” strategy is a wake up call for every security team, especially as 35% of organizations globally report that encrypted traffic represents their biggest breach risk, and 87% say they are concerned about the rise of harvest now, decrypt later attacks, according to new data from the soon to be published 2026 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey of 1,000 security leaders.
Despite these concerns, a dangerous assumption persists: 76% of organizations still believe their encrypted data is inherently secure. While many organizations know quantum may disrupt their encryption strategies in the years ahead, few are meaningfully preparing for it. That makes post-quantum readiness a defining issue for cybersecurity in the next year. The organizations that treat this as a present-day priority, focusing on audits and asset inventory, modernizing security architecture, and adopting more adaptive, zero trust approaches to gain the visibility needed, will be far better positioned to navigate a post-quantum landscape.
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Ian Farquhar, CTO at Gigamon
This Quantum Day should be a wake up call for many organizations. There is little time left to transition, and quantum could be here in as little as four years’ time in some parts of the world.
Even if there’s ongoing debate about how quickly quantum computing will scale, the risk is significant enough and the timelines short enough that organizations can no longer afford to wait. What’s often overlooked is that this isn’t just about ‘harvest now, decrypt later,’ but ‘harvest now, forge later.’ If private keys are compromised, the integrity of identities, transactions, and digital signatures comes into question, derailing longstanding trust and risk calculations that form the backbone of the modern era. This will impact organizations across every industry, impacting consumers and businesses alike.
If we think back to 1999 when Y2K was approaching, the event itself was a forcing function that led to massive technology infrastructure upgrades and tech stack modernization. In that case there was very little impact from the two-digit data representation, and some people characterized it as wasted effort. It was not, as we benefited as an industry from the tech stack modernization which it delivered. But like Y2K, today’s quantum challenge isn’t just the potential event itself, it’s the scale of the remediation effort required across systems, applications, and embedded technologies, which makes early action critical.
The real upside, though, is that this moment is forcing a long-overdue modernization: most organizations rely on a narrow set of aging cryptographic algorithms that have gone largely untouched because they’re difficult to change. To prepare, organizations should create a dedicated team internally, much like a cryptographic center of excellence. From there, this team can inventory where cryptography exists across their environments, prioritizing what matters most, and building the internal muscle, often through dedicated teams, to manage and execute these upgrades. Once done, we then need to monitor our environments to ensure that vulnerable non-PQC crypto has not been missed or sneaks back in. If that effort results in true cryptographic agility, where policies and algorithms can be swapped out quickly in response to future threats, then the investment will have been worth it regardless of how the quantum threat ultimately evolves.
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Mike Baxter, President and Chief Technology & Product Officer at Entrust
In 2026, post-quantum readiness will become the ultimate trust signal for enterprises. As regulators and customers demand proof, organizations that can map, control, and begin transitioning their encryption to NIST-approved quantum-safe algorithms will gain a clear competitive advantage. For the first time, being able to demonstrate quantum resilience will separate leaders from laggards – in government contracts, financial services, and global supply chains.
Those who wait will discover the real point of no return isn’t the day quantum computers arrive, but the moment their encryption sprawl becomes too vast to retrofit. Boards will stop accepting reassurances and start demanding evidence: What percentage of your critical data is quantum-safe today? Companies with tangible answers will set the pace for the next decade.
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Aaron Fulkerson, CEO, OPAQUE
Every major technology shift follows the same pattern: the capability arrives first, the trust layer catches up later. The internet needed HTTPS before commerce could scale. Cloud needed compliance frameworks before enterprises moved critical workloads. AI is going through that same transition now, and quantum will be no different.
Quantum computing will break the cryptographic foundations we rely on today. That’s not theoretical; it’s a matter of time. The question isn’t if, it’s whether your infrastructure is designed to adapt when it happens.
We’re already seeing leading organizations plan against that timeline. Google, a leader in quantum research, has publicly set 2029 as the target for quantum readiness, meaning the window to act is shorter than most realize. The mistake is treating this as a future migration problem. It’s an architectural decision you make now, and World Quantum Day is a great reminder of that.
Those who build cryptographic agility and verifiability guarantees into their systems today won’t be reacting under pressure later. They’ll already be operating in a model where trust isn’t assumed—it’s proven.
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Suman Sharma, Head of PAM Engineering, Ping Identity
As quantum innovation accelerates and we look ahead to its transformative potential, it’s becoming clear that the future is arriving faster than expected. Google’s decision to accelerate its timeline to 2029 underscores a growing industry-wide recognition that the window to prepare for a post-quantum world is narrowing. The internet’s encryption backbone is already undergoing one of the decade’s most significant transformations, with hybrid quantum-resistant standards rolling out across browsers and core infrastructure. While high-security sectors are moving toward fully quantum-safe deployments, much of the broader ecosystem remains in transition. Now is the time for organizations to perform a thorough inventory of all quantum-vulnerable cryptographic algorithms in their code, deployed infrastructure, key stores, databases, and stored data to accurately assess the scope of impact, and start building a detailed plan to migrate to post-quantum (quantum-resistant) cryptography.
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Peter Bentley, COO, Patero
By the end of 2026, all sectors must transition from mere awareness to active implementation. This requires conducting comprehensive cryptographic inventories, prioritizing data based on its vulnerability, and launching a phased migration to quantum-resistant architectures across all IT, operational technology (OT), and telecom environments.
However, it is important to recognize that several immediate critical dangers remain inadequately addressed, including harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, exposure due to long data shelf-lives, and finally, insufficient visibility into the location of vulnerable cryptography.
Moving forward requires decisive, coordinated action: establishing regulatory clarity, funding detailed migration roadmaps, demanding vendor accountability for crypto-agility, and coordinating execution between public and private sectors. With this alignment, Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) evolves from an abstract concept into a crucial strategic tool for maintaining control, resilience, and trust amidst a rapidly changing threat landscape. Without it, PQC remains elusively theoretical.
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Scott Buchholz, Quantum Computing Lead at Deloitte
World Quantum Day is a good time to remind the industry that with the acceleration of quantum computers and their capabilities, the time it takes to train talent, and the growing potential use cases, organizations need a roadmap for how they will derive value from quantum computers. The good news? Quantum-inspired techniques are helping organizations see what’s possible while we wait for hardware to mature – they can run on today’s CPUs and GPUs. Done properly, quantum-inspired techniques provide value today (for instance, in machine learning and simulations) while also providing the opportunity to learn about the techniques used to program quantum computers. Once the hardware comes online, these techniques can pivot to run on future machines, helping futureproof talent and technology.
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Trevor Lanting, chief development officer, D-Wave
On this World Quantum Day, it’s clear we’re beginning to see a gap between what quantum systems can do and what classical systems alone can handle on a growing set of problems, especially in optimization. At the same time, advances across technical, commercial, and architectural fronts are reinforcing each other and accelerating the field. Quantum is moving from possibility to proof, with real-world applications and measurable performance gains emerging faster than expected.
At the same time, different architectural approaches are at different stages of maturity. Annealing quantum computing is already delivering commercial value today in areas such as logistics, manufacturing, and telecommunications. Meanwhile gate-model quantum computing continues advancing toward scalable, error-corrected systems that will expand what’s possible. Annealing quantum computers are particularly well suited for large-scale optimization problems, while gate-model systems are expected to be well suited for quantum chemistry.
The future won’t be defined by a single approach, but by multiple architectures working together. That’s why D-Wave is pursuing a dual-platform strategy, enabling customers to apply the right quantum approach to the right problem. The question is no longer when quantum will be useful, but how quickly it can be deployed to solve real-world challenges.
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Murray Thom, vice president of quantum technology evangelism, D-Wave
World Quantum Day is a good moment to step back and look at what’s actually happening in this industry. For years, the conversation was about technology. Today, it is about results.
At D-Wave, we’re seeing a clear trend among our customers: a focus on production quantum applications. From the outset, their projects are designed with the goal of successfully deploying quantum solutions into real-world operations. With a growing set of customer success stories now in production, organizations are gaining a clearer understanding of which problems are well-suited to quantum and how to successfully bring their own applications to life.
What’s becoming clear now is the urgency. Operating environments have fundamentally changed: more variables, more constraints, more volatility. The approaches that worked a decade ago weren’t designed for this level of complexity. The organizations pulling ahead are the ones rethinking how they solve their hardest problems—now.
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