Right now, someone could be copying your encrypted traffic off the wire and storing it. They can't read it. The TLS session protecting your database credentials, your API secrets, and your customer data in transit is safe against every computer that exists today.
They don't need to read it today. They need to read it in 2032, when a large enough quantum computer runs Shor's algorithm and unwinds the elliptic-curve math that TLS uses to agree on a session key. The ciphertext they harvested this morning gets decrypted the moment that hardware arrives.
This is the "harvest now, decrypt later" threat, and it's a today problem for any data that stays sensitive for years. AWS has been rolling out the fix across its services, and the interesting part is how quiet it's been. If you connect to AWS Secrets Manager with a current client, your handshake is already post-quantum. Most people never noticed the switch.
Here's what changed, why it matters, and a demo you can run in ten seconds to see it on your own connections.
Why "Later" Is Closer Than the Headlines Suggest
