Quantum computing: the market accelerates, digital security lags behind

The quantum computing market is entering a phase of measurable growth, according to estimates released by Gartner. The analysis firm puts the value of the business linked to this technology at 869 million dollars in 2026, with a projection rising to 1,100 million dollars for 2027. These figures concern the entire ecosystem: hardware, software and services connected to quantum computers, a category of machines that exploits the principles of quantum mechanics to perform calculations that are impossible or extremely slow for traditional processors.

Alongside this commercial growth, a warning signal comes from Mexico concerning a different but related area: cybersecurity. Researchers from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the Tecnológico de Monterrey warn that the digital protection schemes currently in use risk becoming ineffective against the processing speed of new quantum processors. The point raised by the academics does not concern a single product or company, but the very architecture of the cryptography that protects communications, financial transactions and sensitive data on a global scale: most of these systems are based on mathematical problems that a classical computer would take extremely long periods to solve, but which a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could address in much shorter times.

The two pieces of news, although originating from distinct sources and contexts, describe faces of the same technological transition. On one hand there is an industrial sector attracting investment, which Gartner sees expanding in the short term; on the other there are academic institutions signaling a consequence of that same expansion that has not yet been fully addressed. This is not an isolated alarmist prediction: the issue of the so-called “quantum threat” to cryptography has been discussed for years in research circles, but the Mexican warning arrives at a moment when market growth, certified by an independent analysis institution such as Gartner, makes the issue less theoretical.

It should be noted that market estimates remain, precisely, estimates: Gartner itself presents them as projections, subject to the uncertainties typical of any forecast concerning a technological sector still in development. The jump between the 869 million dollars of 2026 and the 1,100 million of 2027 indicated by the analysis firm does not equate to an already consolidated figure, but to a growth expectation built on current sector trends.

On the security front, the warning from the Mexican universities is not accompanied, in the excerpts available, by a precise timeline as to when quantum processors would reach the power necessary to compromise current cryptographic standards. This is an element of uncertainty worth declaring: the distance between the theory of risk and its practical realization depends on technical variables still in evolution, and the very researchers raising the alarm work in a field where developments are not linear.

What emerges clearly, cross-referencing the two sources, is that the quantum sector is ceasing to be a purely experimental field and entering a phase in which commercial investments and security implications are beginning to proceed in parallel. Companies and governments that currently rely on conventional cryptography have ahead of them a time window, whose extent has not yet been subject to a shared estimate, to adapt their defenses before quantum technology reaches the commercial maturity that Gartner forecasts for the coming years.