Storage infrastructure will underpin post-quantum security

Date:
Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:54:23 +0000

Description:
Protect long-term enterprise AI data from future quantum threats by securing underlying storage infrastructure today.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter AI has rewritten the enterprise data playbook. Workflows no longer just create temporary operational data,
but vast amounts of high-value assets, from LLM training datasets and model outputs to logs, metadata and archived knowledge that may need to be
preserved for years. Uwe Kemmer Social Links Navigation

Director of EMEAI Field Engineering at WD (Western Digital). As enterprise tech leaders seek to scale infrastructure to meet these demands, storage requirements are undergoing a fundamental shift. Capacity and performance remain critical, but data security has become equally important. Today, long-term data integrity and absolute cyber resilience carry equal weight. Protecting this data, however, is no longer just about defeating todays
threat vectors. It requires preparing storage infrastructure for a
significant shift: the arrival of quantum computing. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: Data is a long-term strategic asset, not a short-lived trend AI is accelerating data growth, but it can also extend the useful life of information. Data recorded today will be harvested for compliance, advanced analytics and model retraining for years to come.

To manage this economically, enterprise architectures rely heavily on high-capacity HDDs . While flash technologies dominate performance-critical hot tiers, HDDs remain the undisputed backbone of large-scale storage, providing the capacity, economics and longevity needed to archive data at scale. You may like Quantum is already compromising your data, you just cant see it yet AIs overlooked storage opportunity How AI-ready NAS is rewriting enterprise data management

As a result, organizations must consider how to protect not only today's
data, but also its future value. After all, if the underlying infrastructure is compromised down the road, the very assets driving future AI innovations become the biggest operational and regulatory liability. Harvest now, decrypt later Current encryption technologies remain effective against conventional threats. However, quantum computing is expected to challenge some of the cryptographic methods used for authentication and key exchange. Are you a
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This has led to concerns around harvest now, decrypt later attacks, where encrypted data is collected today with the expectation that future quantum capabilities could potentially decrypt it later.

For organizations storing sensitive intellectual property, research data or
AI training datasets, this means security decisions made today could have implications for years to come.

Preparing for that future requires action from security leaders and IT directors now. What to read next Quantum's greatest breakthrough may be trust The quantum countdown: Are organizations ready to avoid the next Y2K
Preparing for post-quantum cryptography: Building a practical roadmap
Security must be built into the infrastructure Security is often viewed through the lens of data encryption, and with good reason. Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) provide always-on, hardware-based AES-256 encryption that helps protect data at rest without impacting performance.

But protecting data alone is no longer enough.

Storage devices themselves must be trusted. Firmware, authentication mechanisms, provisioning processes and diagnostic tools all play a role in ensuring a drive operates securely throughout its lifecycle.

If attackers compromise a device's firmware or trust architecture, broader security controls can be undermined regardless of how data is encrypted elsewhere in the system. This makes storage security a critical component of overall cyber resilience. Implementing quantum-resistant defenses in storage To counter these emerging attack vectors, the storage industry is actively embedding post-quantum cryptography into hardware architecture of enterprise hard drives. Rather than focusing solely on protecting data, the objective is to protect the trust architecture that underpins the drive itself.

Post quantum cryptography (PQC) technologies are being incorporated into
areas such as secure key establishment, firmware authentication, secure provisioning, and trusted diagnostics. These capabilities are designed in alignment with established NIST post-quantum standards and are implemented using hybrid approaches that combine classical cryptography with quantum-resistant algorithms.

In practical terms, this means that the mechanisms responsible for establishing trust, validating firmware integrity and protecting administrative functions can remain resilient against both conventional and future quantum-enabled attacks. With the operational service life of HDDs often spanning 5 years (or more), implementing PQC today helps protect
against quantum-based threats that may not materialize for several years, but that we know are coming.

Importantly, HDDs have long incorporated security controls to defend against today's threats. PQC does not replace these protections; it enhances them by adding an additional layer of resilience against emerging attack vectors. Trust in the AI era For many years, storage innovation was primarily defined by increases in capacity. Today, the expectations placed on infrastructure
are much broader.

Organizations seek storage platforms that can scale with AI-driven data growth, deliver reliable performance, preserve integrity over long retention periods and withstand an increasingly complex threat environment.

PQC represents an important step in that evolution. By extending protection beyond data encryption and into the trust mechanisms that underpin storage devices themselves, PQC-enabled HDDs help organizations prepare for the security challenges of tomorrow while protecting the data they manage today.

As AI continues to elevate the strategic value of enterprise data, security can no longer be a short-term, reactive consideration. Trust must be engineered directly into the hardware layer and built to outlast the threats of today, tomorrow and the quantum era ahead of us. We've featured the best SSD. This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives , our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit



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