Remember when we thought AI-powered cyber threat detection was the endgame? Turns out, we were bringing a neural network to a quantum fight.
While enterprises are busy deploying AI to catch hackers faster, a much scarier arms race is brewing in the background, one where quantum computing could crack every encryption standard we rely on and AI might be the accelerant that makes it all happen sooner than we think.
The exponential collision no one is ready for: “Think of it as two exponential technologies colliding,” Saugat Sindhu, Global Head of Advisory Services in Cybersecurity & Risk Services at Wipro, told us. “The intersection of Generative AI (Gen AI) and quantum computing will be tenfold more dangerous because of the processing power quantum brings.”
- Translation: AI makes attacks smarter. Quantum makes them unstoppable. Together? They're rewriting the entire playbook
The first thing to break? Encryption, the mathematical lock protecting your bank account, your government's secrets, and basically everything that happens online.
The wake-up call: Wipro's latest cybersecurity report doesn't mince words: 75% of enterprises lack the expertise to defend against AI-led attacks, while 86% of recent breaches involved nation-state actors. Sindhu says the fix requires a two-front war.
"It's a two-pronged model involving infrastructure hardening around post-quantum encryption and AI model hardening against adversarial attacks like evasion and data poisoning," he explained.
In other words, you need to quantum-proof your systems and teach your AI not to get fooled.
VCs smell opportunity: Where there's existential risk, there's venture capital. Accel's Prayank Swaroop sees this as a greenfield moment for founders.
"If quantum becomes real, existing cybersecurity solutions will fail…That again gives a large surface area for Indian founders to go after. Some founders should start investing time and energy toward it," Swaroop told us.
The message is clear: if you're building in security, now's the time to get quantum-serious.
Enter Agentic AI: Coforge's Chief Technology Officer Vic Gupta is betting on "opinionated intelligence" as the next line of defence.
"Agentic AI will be central to cyber defence in the coming years," he said. "Our goal is to ensure AI can autonomously detect, respond, and remediate without losing control of its boundaries."
But here's the catch: autonomy cuts both ways. Global tech research firm Forrester predicts at least one major public breach caused by Agentic AI within two years, as autonomous systems begin making real-time decisions in production. Security teams, it warns, must secure AI intent and track data origin to avoid cascading failures.
Quantum rewrites the rules: Forrester expects quantum-safe spending to exceed 5% of global IT security budgets by 2026.
- Governments are moving fast, the US and EU are funding quantum migration programmes, while India is studying its impact on data sovereignty and defence systems
The clock is ticking. Even if large-scale quantum computers are years away, the data being stolen today could be decrypted tomorrow once quantum arrives. It's called "harvest now, decrypt later," and it's already happening.
The automation paradox: Gartner's Cybersecurity and Risk Outlook 2026 highlights the irony: AI will make systems smarter and faster, but overreliance on automation without human oversight could create new systemic risks.
As Sindhu put it: “Threat modelling must now extend beyond networks and data to AI systems themselves.”
The bottom line: The future of cybersecurity will not be code versus code. It will be compute versus compute. Quantum may break encryption, but AI will decide who holds the master key.
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