A Radar for Q-Day: Information Security

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Cassandra, princess of Troy, is one of the most tragic figures in Greek mythology because of the cruelty of her fate. The god Apollo, deeply in love with her, granted her the gift of prophecy as a gesture of courtship to win her love; however, the young woman did not return Apollo’s love. Enraged by her rejection, yet unable to take back the divine gift of foresight he had already bestowed upon her, Apollo cursed her with an ironic punishment: Cassandra would continue to predict the future with absolute precision, but no one would ever believe her warnings, condemning her to be treated as a madwoman.

This terrible curse sealed the fate of her people during the famous Trojan War. Cassandra desperately foretold the burning of her city, the betrayal hidden within the Trojan Horse, and the deaths of her loved ones, but her pleas were systematically ignored by the Trojans. After the city’s fall, she was captured as spoils of war by the Greek king Agamemnon and taken to Mycenae, where she predicted in vain the bloody murder of both of them at the hands of Queen Clytemnestra. Her legend has endured in popular culture as the ultimate symbol of powerlessness: possessing the absolute truth yet being completely unable to convince others to change their fate.

In the world of cybersecurity (and science in general), many experts suffer in much the same way as Cassandra, as warnings about impending risks are often ignored or downplayed—since believing them requires investing time, money, and other precious resources from an organization’s operations. At Cyte, in particular, we view with concern the passivity of the Colombian government and most organizations in the face of the latent risk that quantum computing poses to the security of sensitive information transmitted on a daily basis—information upon which the country’s stability depends. We have addressed this issue in articles such as this one or this one, and we know that to many it may sound like a repetitive or distant topic. But the problem, at its core, remains the same—and it is becoming increasingly urgent.

For this reason, we are pleased to see educational initiatives aimed at raising awareness and preparing the general public to understand and prepare for the arrival of Q-Day (the hypothetical date when quantum computers will become powerful enough to break the current encryption systems that protect the world’s digital security). We therefore invite you to visit and explore the Quantum Safe Observatory website at https://observatorioquantumsafe.org/, created by professors at the Universidad de los Andes with technological support from Cyte, where you can find simplified information and educational resources to understand the issue and take action on it.

The Quantum-Safe Observatory and Information Security

The observatory is an initiative to raise awareness about the quantum threat to cryptography and to promote the adoption of post-quantum cryptography and the future of data protection.

Here, you’ll find a Q-Day exposure risk calculator and can assess in just 2 minutes how quantum risk might affect your business:

• https://observatorioquantumsafe.org/calculadora-pqc

We particularly recommend the “Methodology and Adoption” section, where you can view interactive demonstrations—with pre-prepared data—to see how vulnerable cryptography is detected and migrated to a quantum computer:

• https://observatorioquantumsafe.org/metodologia

One statistic that clearly illustrates the urgency: the observatory reports that, of the servers it has analyzed, more than 60% negotiate their keys using classical cryptography—meaning their traffic can be copied today and decrypted on Q-Day. And the technical threshold for breaking RSA-2048 has continued to fall: from an estimated one billion qubits in 2012 to around one million today.

The good news—and the observatory is just as clear on this point—is that the defense already exists: the post-quantum algorithms ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA have been standardized by NIST since August 2024, and the X25519MLKEM768 hybrid cipher already protects traffic from browsers such as Chrome and Firefox.

The difference between Cassandra and those of us who are warning about Q-Day today is that we can actually change the outcome of this story: post-quantum cryptography already exists, it has already been standardized, and we can already begin the migration. The only thing left is for organizations and the Colombian government to decide to listen before the prophecy comes true. At Cyte, we’ll keep pushing the issue, in the hope that this time—unlike the Trojans—we’ll actually act in time.