What Boards Will Ask About Quantum in Q1
And what CISOs need to show if they want credible answers
Qryptonic Research
Jan 12, 2026
Why this matters now
Q1 is when governance pressure becomes concrete.
Boards return from year-end resets with approved budgets, refreshed risk registers, and standing agendas. Directors are no longer discussing emerging risk in the abstract. They are asking what has changed, what exposure exists today, and whether management can demonstrate progress rather than intent.
Quantum risk has now entered that category.
Not because boards understand quantum computing, but because they grasp these concepts immediately: long-lived data, long remediation timelines, and silent exposure. These are governance problems, not technical ones, and they map directly to fiduciary responsibility. Recent board-governance research shows directors are spending more time on risks that accumulate quietly and cannot be remediated quickly once discovered.¹
As a result, Q1 is when quantum moves from background discussion to direct questioning.
Why boards are asking now
This shift did not happen overnight.
Audit committees and risk committees have spent the past several years recalibrating how they evaluate technology risk, particularly where remediation timelines exceed executive tenure and disclosure lags exposure. Long-tail risks that cannot be “patched” in a quarter now receive different scrutiny than transient operational threats.
Quantum risk fits that pattern precisely.
The questions below are already appearing in audit committee meetings, risk reviews, and security briefings. They are not technical questions. They are tests of preparedness.
1. “What data do we have today that must remain confidential for decades?”
This is usually the first question, and it is rarely answered cleanly.
Boards are not asking for a list of applications. They are asking whether management understands the mismatch between data lifespan and cryptographic lifespan.
Financial records.
Healthcare data.
Legal evidence.
Customer histories.
Intellectual property.
Research archives.
A weak answer sounds like:
“We’re monitoring standards and will address this as guidance evolves.”
A credible answer sounds like:
“We’ve identified which categories of long-lived data we hold, where they live, how they’re encrypted today, and which ones represent the highest exposure.”
The difference is not sophistication. It is visibility.
2. “Do we actually know what cryptography we’re using?”
This question exposes discomfort quickly.
Boards understand modern environments are layered, vendor-heavy, and full of inherited complexity. They also understand that cryptography is embedded everywhere and rarely inventoried as a system.
They are testing whether the organization can answer basic questions:
Which algorithms protect production data?
What about backups and disaster recovery?
Which services rely on vendor-controlled encryption?
Where do deprecated key exchanges still exist?
A weak answer sounds like:
“Our platforms use industry-standard encryption.”
A credible answer sounds like:
“We’ve completed initial cryptographic discovery across production and recovery environments and can show where exposure exists.”
In one recent engagement with a large regulated enterprise, initial discovery revealed that more than a third of asymmetric key exchanges occurred inside middleware owned and configured by third-party vendors. None of those paths appeared in security architecture diagrams. All of them carried long-lived data.
Boards do not expect perfection here. They expect honesty backed by evidence.
3. “How long would it take us to migrate if we had to?”
This is where timelines become uncomfortable.
Boards are less interested in when quantum computers arrive than in how long remediation takes once it starts. Analyst estimates and federal guidance consistently place enterprise-scale post-quantum migration in the ten-to-fifteen-year range once discovery, testing, vendor coordination, and remediation are included.²
They are asking:
Is this a two-year effort or a ten-year one?
What phases are involved?
What dependencies slow it down?
What cannot be accelerated?
A weak answer sounds like:
“It depends on vendors and future guidance.”
A credible answer sounds like:
“We’ve broken migration into discovery, prioritization, testing, vendor alignment, and remediation. Based on our environment, this is a multi-year program.”
This is not pessimism. It is realism.
4. “What happens if we wait another year?”
This question sounds harmless. It is not.
Boards are not asking whether waiting is acceptable in principle. They are asking what changes if the organization does nothing in the next twelve months.
Does exposure increase?
Does more long-lived data accumulate?
Do vendor dependencies deepen?
Does remediation become harder later?
This is where a specific threat model matters. Harvest-now-decrypt-later describes an adversarial strategy in which encrypted data is collected today and stored for future decryption once cryptographic protections fail. The compromise happens now. The impact appears later.³
A weak answer sounds like:
“Quantum timelines are still uncertain.”
A credible answer sounds like:
“Waiting increases the amount of data exposed and reduces our available remediation window, even if timelines slip.”
Boards do not need the acronym. They need the implication.
5. “What proof would an external party ask for?”
Imagine this question coming not from a director, but from an insurer or plaintiff’s counsel after a disclosure.
What could you show?
What documentation existed?
What decisions were recorded?
What work had actually begun?
A weak answer sounds like:
“We would explain our strategy.”
A credible answer sounds like:
“We have documentation showing what we discovered, what we tested, which data we prioritized, and how progress is being measured.”
Boards are not looking for guarantees. They are looking for defensibility.
6. “Who owns this, and how often will we see it again?”
This is the accountability question.
Boards want to know whether quantum risk lives with security, IT, architecture, legal, or procurement. They want to know whether it will reappear quarterly, annually, or only when someone remembers to raise it.
A weak answer sounds like:
“It’s part of our long-term roadmap.”
A credible answer sounds like:
“It has an executive owner, defined milestones, and regular reporting to this committee.”
This is the moment quantum stops being an abstract threat and becomes a governed risk.
Why many CISOs struggle in Q1
The issue is not lack of understanding. It is lack of artifacts.
Most CISOs have thought deeply about quantum risk. Far fewer have translated that thinking into materials that stand up to board scrutiny.
They bring narratives, not inventories.
Intentions, not timelines.
Confidence, not documentation.
Q1 exposes that gap quickly.
What prepared CISOs do differently
Prepared CISOs change the conversation before the first question is asked.
They talk about exposure windows, not predictions.
They show work in progress, not finished solutions.
They bring evidence into the room before it is requested.
They do not claim certainty. They demonstrate preparedness.
How Qryptonic supports this work
Qryptonic works with enterprises that want to move from conversation to proof.
That typically includes establishing cryptographic visibility across production, backup, and recovery environments; identifying downgrade paths and vendor-controlled encryption decisions; stress-testing real systems rather than relying on theoretical compliance; and building governance artifacts boards, regulators, and insurers can review.
The goal is not to “solve quantum” in a quarter. It is to ensure that when boards ask hard questions, the organization can answer them credibly.
Conclusion
Q1 is when boards stop asking whether quantum matters and start asking whether it is being managed.
The most effective CISOs are not the ones with the most confident predictions. They are the ones with the clearest evidence.
A useful test going into your next board meeting is simple:
If a director asked you one of these questions tomorrow, could you show your answer, or would you have to explain it?
That distinction separates awareness from readiness.
For further reading
For a copy of Qryptonic’s quantum threat analysis, visit
https://www.qryptonic.com/contact
Ready to prove post-quantum readiness?
Q-Scout — rapid, non-invasive cryptographic discovery
Q-Strike — live quantum stress testing
Q-Solve — program design mapped to controls and supplier demands
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This publication is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or technical advice. Qryptonic Research makes no representations regarding accuracy or completeness. Readers should not rely on this material as a substitute for independent due diligence, formal assessments, or regulatory obligations. References to third parties do not imply endorsement.
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Footnotes
National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), 2024–2025 Board Governance Outlook.
NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography program materials; NSA CNSA 2.0 guidance; OMB Memorandum M-23-02.
U.S. intelligence and public cybersecurity guidance describing harvest-now-decrypt-later as an active collection strategy.