At a summit in New York, Carlos Moreira,, the CEO of SEALSQ warns of an impending quantum threat, bringing global security to a crossroads.
Carlos Moreira SEALSQ
The Cantor Quantum Security Event brought together the world’s cybersecurity community to discuss the emergence of quantum computing, one of the biggest technical challenges of the twenty-first century. Carlos Moreira, CEO of SEALSQ Corp (NASDAQ: LAES), issued a dire warning to investors, IT executives, and policy experts against the backdrop of fast innovation and growing digital vulnerability. His message was unambiguous: the window of opportunity to protect the most sensitive data in the world against quantum-enabled attacks is closing more quickly than many people think.
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The Looming Shadow of “Q-Day”
Carlos Moreira addressed the common conjecture about “Q-Day”—the hypothetical moment when a quantum computer becomes strong enough to defeat existing encryption standards like RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography, during a high-level roundtable discussion. Moreira contended that the timescale for risk is actually considerably shorter, despite some predictions indicating that this capacity is still 10 to fifteen years away.
The “harvest now, decrypt later” approach is the main source of worry. Large volumes of encrypted data are currently being gathered by threat actors from financial institutions, government organizations, and healthcare providers. Even while they are now unable to decipher this data, scientists are hoping that in the future, quantum computers will enable them to discover these mysteries.
Carlos Moreira informed the audience, “The strategic answer is not to predict Q-Day perfectly.” “It is to eliminate high-value systems’ quantum-vulnerable cryptography before the prediction matters.” This is especially important for data that has a lengthy secrecy lifespan, such identification systems, vital infrastructure communications, and intellectual property.
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A Defense Strategy with Three Layers
Carlos Moreira described three distinct methods to quantum-safe security that businesses must use to guarantee long-term resilience to counter these emerging threats:
- The “primary migration path” for the majority of companies is post-quantum cryptography (PQC). PQC entails substituting new classical algorithms created especially to fend off quantum assaults for existing, susceptible public-key algorithms. When the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) completed the first PQC standards in August 2024 and called for their rapid implementation, this shift garnered a lot of traction.
- Secure Key Agreement (SKA): Carlos Moreira termed SKA as a “pragmatic complementary layer”. For business VPNs and point-to-point communications, SKA can offer an additional degree of security by dynamically creating symmetric keys via secure platforms. He warned, nonetheless, that it should complement a complete PQC migration rather than take its place.
- Quantum Key Distribution (QKD): Although very successful in high-assurance, specialized settings, QKD is not yet a universal solution. Its application is still restricted to certain high-security niches due to operational and infrastructural limitations.
The Need for “Crypto-Agility”
The complexity of contemporary digital ecosystems is one of the biggest obstacles to this shift. Many businesses falsely see quantum security as a straightforward “algorithm replacement,” Moreira said. Rather, he contended that an enterprise-wide shift based on “crypto-agility” is necessary for a successful conversion.
The ability of an organization to offer insight into its usage of cryptography and the flexibility to upgrade such systems across complicated environments, from supply chains and hardware security modules to firmware and code signing, is known as crypto-agility. Moreira stressed that to avoid weak links from compromising the entire system, enterprises need to have a thorough inventory of all the places in their infrastructure where cryptography is employed.
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Identifying Priority Sectors
Carlos Moreira recognized a number of businesses that need to spearhead quantum migration because of their systemic significance. Among them are:
- Government and Defense: safeguarding national security and state secrets.
- Financial Institutions: Protecting individual wealth and the world economy.
- Healthcare: Safeguarding private patient information.
- Critical Infrastructure: Making sure transportation, water, and electricity systems are stable.
- Cloud and telecom providers: safeguarding the foundation of contemporary communication.
“Protecting these sectors early significantly reduces global cyber risk,” Moreira stated, stressing that they combine “long-lived sensitive data with systemic importance”.
The Foundation for Hardware
The topic of hardware’s function in the post-quantum era was finally brought up. At the moment, SEALSQ is leading the way in Post-Quantum Semiconductors, which include protection right into the silicon. A “hardware root of trust” is what these products, like the Quantum Shield QS7001 and QVault TPM, are intended to offer.
Carlos Moreira came to the conclusion that software algorithms are not enough on their own. He said, “Weak identity systems, insecure firmware, or poor key management cannot be fixed by quantum-safe algorithms alone.” To guarantee that devices are shielded from present and potential dangers, true resilience necessitates a foundation of secure components and robust key custody.
Attendees felt a concentrated sense of urgency as the Cantor event came to a conclusion. Even if the quantum danger is a “decade-scale risk,” efforts to lessen it must be made now. As the era of quantum computing approaches, SEALSQ and its partners want to maintain the security of the digital world by combining NIST-standardized PQC, crypto-agility, and strong hardware security.
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