Inside The Coming Quantum Crisis: Why CEOs Must Prepare For Q-Day Now

Forbes

28-05-2025

Tech giants, global governments, and infrastructure providers must work together to implement post-quantum cryptographic standards, ensure secure migration paths, and educate the leadership class about what's at stake.
When John Parsons, CEO of AI-driven vehicle data company Click-Ins, talks about Q-Day—the hypothetical moment when quantum computers can crack today's digital encryption—he doesn't mince words. 'What makes Q-Day so terrifying,' he says, 'is that it could potentially mark the end of security as we know it.'
In an age where businesses run on code and secrets travel across fiber optics, the idea that those secrets—whether government, corporate, or personal—could suddenly become public is chilling. But for Parsons, this is not science fiction. It's a looming technological and societal inflection point.
Parsons describes Q-Day as a 'point of no return.' Classical encryption—currently safeguarding everything from nuclear codes to your bank account—would be rendered obsolete. A quantum machine with sufficient power could retroactively crack nearly every piece of encrypted data that wasn't future-proofed.
And the implications are not just abstract. 'Imagine being mid-flight when air traffic control goes down—not because of a glitch, but because a quantum-enabled actor has hijacked the system. We've already seen outages where controllers lost contact with planes for 90 seconds. Stretch that to 90 minutes with bad actors in charge,' he warns.
Worse still are the stakes in healthcare. 'We've seen real cases where ransomware attacks forced hospitals to reroute ambulances, leading to patient deaths. Now add quantum capabilities to those attackers.'
Skeptics often draw comparisons between Q-Day fears and the Y2K bug panic. Parsons is quick to call that logic dangerously flawed.
'People forget Y2K was a non-event because half a trillion dollars and 400 million person-hours were invested to make sure it didn't become a catastrophe,' he says. 'This isn't a fire drill like Y2K. Q-Day is a skyscraper engulfed in flames. And the fire engines haven't even been dispatched.'
The difference? Our current systems are exponentially more interconnected, and much of the infrastructure—especially encryption—is not quantum-resistant.
Parsons believes confronting the post-quantum era will require a level of coordination unseen since the Y2K effort. 'This is a problem so massive, affecting so many layers of global society, that only a coordinated governmental, military, and business response can mitigate the consequences.'
Tech giants, global governments, and infrastructure providers must work together to implement post-quantum cryptographic standards, ensure secure migration paths, and educate the leadership class about what's at stake.
Unfortunately, many businesses remain unaware or dismissive of the threat. 'I see CTOs on LinkedIn suggesting Post Quantum Cryptography will be a silver bullet, and it's disheartening. These people are in leadership roles, but they're dangerously uninformed.'
According to Parsons, awareness must precede action. The quantum threat isn't just a technical problem; it's a strategic risk. Failing to prepare is, in effect, gambling with proprietary data, customer trust, and long-term viability.
Enterprise software providers like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, and AWS sit at the heart of the global economy. SAP's customers alone generate 87% of total global commerce, for example.
These providers must start now, bolstering their systems for quantum resistance and providing customers with migration paths.
SAP is doing just that, according to SAP CEO Christian Klein who has been working with quantum computing companies to explore how the technology can be securely used in enterprise software environment. In this recent Investor's Business Daily article, Klein said the following about the promise of quantum computing when running complicated reports:
"There are a lot of things coming together. But time-wise, we can definitely believe that simulations you would run today in a week, you can probably bring down to an hour. Give this technology a few more years, probably we will talk hours or minutes at a certain point of time."
As for mitigation tools, Parsons sees promise in technologies like Quantum eMotion's Quantum Random Number Generators (QRNGs). Traditional encryption relies on pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs), which—even in post-quantum systems—can be vulnerable if seeded poorly. Quantum eMotion's QRNG2 tech, built on the laws of quantum mechanics rather than mathematical approximation, offers a truly random key base that even quantum computers can't reverse-engineer.
He points to the Apple TV series Prime Target as a dramatized but relevant example of how vulnerable prime-number-based encryption is in the quantum era. 'Ironically, if QRNG2 were in use, the entire premise of the show would fall apart.'
Parsons' call to action is clear: executives need to treat the quantum transition as an urgent strategic priority. 'If we wait until Q-Day to act, it'll be too late.'
The good news? There is still time to act, but the window is narrowing. As quantum computing advances from the lab to the world stage, the organizations that prepare now will be tomorrow's leaders.