Our entire economy is built primarily on a digital backbone. What we're talking about is vulnerability to the foundational cryptographic systems that keep that backbone secure. If we're not looking at updating those systems.... A lot of the cryptographic layer that's protecting our systems right now goes back to the 1970s. It's due for a refresh, to say the least.
With the opportunity right now with the quantum threat, which we've known about since 1994, there have been a number of Canadians advocating for the need to prepare for this and leading the development of solutions that are now standardized in this space and ready for deployment. We have truly a generational opportunity to be not just migrating over to quantum-safe solutions, but to be fundamentally refreshing our cryptographic layer and ensuring we have that protection over the digital backbone that is going to underpin our entire economy, national security systems, government systems and pretty much everything that we transact over now.
The potential risk for this is quite frankly catastrophic. It's something that we know about. We need to take action and move forward with urgency and ensure it's not just the government that's protected, but all of society.