State Dept. official says post-quantum transition plans will outlive current leadership
State Dept. official says post-quantum transition plans will outlive current leadership
https://cyberscoop.com/post-quantum-state-department-transition-plans-outlive-leadership-cycles/
Publish Date: 2026-02-19 15:46:00
Source Domain: cyberscoop.com
A cybersecurity official at the State Department called for the public and private sector to more tightly coordinate plans to transition their systems, devices and data to quantum-resistant encryption algorithms.
Gharun Lacy, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Cyber and Technology Security Directorate at the Department of State, issued a challenge for cybersecurity defenders to view their own individual “post-quantum” encryption plans as a small part in a greater collective project to make the entire digital ecosystem more resilient against longer-term threats like quantum-enabled cyberattacks.
With adversaries like China able to target “entire ecosystems” for digital compromise, Lacy argued for the industries and sectors being plundered to come together in shared interest and create strong and consistent protections across society. In that context, modernization is about more than upgrading your technology or encryption.
“We have to defend holistically as an ecosystem,” said Lacy while speaking at CyberTalks, presented by CyberScoop, in Washington D.C. Thursday. “The organization that goes by themselves in modernization will not succeed.”
The State Department is exploring the potential for predictive attack chain analysis, using historical telemetry and planning to predict “where we’re going to be in the future.” Other countries are doing the same, he said, underscoring how challenges like data harvesting must be addressed for national security purposes.
Modernization plans must do more than update technology to perform the same security functions more effectively. They should also reshape the threat surface while “breaking some of the tendencies that are predictable from our historical data.”
“It’s not just about modernizing hardware, it’s not just about implementing AI faster,” said Lacy. “It’s about injecting that little segment of randomness that means the adversary that’s reading, 10, 20…
