Threats of Classical Encryption to Quantum: Regulatory Problems in the Governance of Data Privacy

¹ Assistant Professor, ICFAI Law School, IFHE University, India
² Assistant Professor, School of Law, Woxsen University, India

^* Corresponding author: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Published online: 19 June 2026

Abstract

The emerging threat to current cryptographic infrastructures supporting the world's data security and privacy regimes is the accelerating development of quantum computing. RSA and several other classical encryption systems are susceptible to quantum algorithms like the Shor algorithm, and thus to the quantum threat on the pillars of digital trust. The implications of these quantum threats on regulation have been critically reviewed in this paper by looking at the suitability of the current data protection and cybersecurity guidelines in combating the emerging risks. Even though, in the present legal system, as has been introduced, e.g. in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, in India, the technology-neutral approach is applied, the disruptive capacity of quantum computing on the encryption standards is not directly addressed.

The study adopts the policy-oriented perspective and assesses the phenomenon of harvest now, decrypt later and the effect it has on data security in the long term, intergenerational privacy, and regulation accountability. It examines the activity of the international work on the topic of post-quantum cryptography (PQC), in particular, it is also concerned with the projects that involve the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and identifies the inconsistency between the technical context of standards and the legal one.