President Joe Biden has signed into law the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, legislation to push the federal government to adopt technology designed to protect against potential data breach attempts by a future quantum computer.
The Dec. 21 signing of the bipartisan measure, also called H.R. 7535, comes amid a race with China in advancing quantum computing technology and amid concerns that China and other adversaries of the United States could one day be able to decrypt existing forms of secure encryption, which rely on classical computers and are thus limited in computational ability compared to quantum computers.
The newly-signed legislation requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—the largest office within the White House—to prioritize the migration of federal agencies’ information technology systems to post-quantum cryptography….