What School Boards Need to Know About Post-Quantum Cryptography

Post-quantum cryptography is a governance issue before it is a technical one. Boards oversee institutions that hold student records, health information and decades of archived data.

The relevant concept is harvest-now-decrypt-later: data captured today may be decrypted in the future once sufficiently capable quantum computers exist. Data with a long confidentiality lifetime is exposed now, not later.

Three questions are usually enough to begin. What data do we hold that must remain confidential for more than ten years? Which of our vendors have published a post-quantum migration position? Who in our organisation owns cryptographic risk?

Boards that ask these questions early convert a future technical migration into a managed, budgeted program rather than an emergency.