Cyber Insurers Downplay 10-Year Quantum Claims Risk as Encryption Warnings Mount

3 articles · Updated · Re-Insurance.com · Jul 8

Six cyber insurance market participants at a London conference said quantum computing is unlikely to generate significant insured losses in the near term, despite growing concern over future encryption failures.
IBM Quantum Safe lead Lory Thorpe urged companies to start shifting to post-quantum cryptography, warning that more powerful machines could eventually crack public-key standards such as RSA.
A key concern was “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, but insurers and lawyers said most current cybercrime targets unencrypted data that can be monetized immediately rather than stored for years.
Beazley and other market participants said annual policy renewals and underwriting changes give insurers time to adapt, while proving a decrypted dataset came from a breach 10 years earlier would be difficult.
That leaves quantum risk framed mainly as a long-term transition issue for data holders and security teams, not yet a material driver of cyber insurance claims.