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  Hey everyone, I'm Drex, and this is the Two Minute Drill, where I do three quick stories twice a week, all part of one great community, the 229 Cyber and RISC community here at This Week Health. Today's drill is brought to you by Fortified Health Security. No matter where you're at in your security journey, Fortified can help you improve your security posture through their 24 7 threat defense services or advisory solutions delivered through Central Command.

A first of its kind platform that simplifies cybersecurity management and provides the visibility you need to mature your program. Learn more at fortifiedhealthsecurity. com. Thanks for joining me today. Here's some stuff you might want to know about. Okay. I'm going to start with a quick story. Hang with me.

But one of the many things that eventually caught up to Armstrong were those same blood tests. that he submitted to regularly while he was racing. See, some of that blood was tested immediately, but the rest of that blood was stored away for comparative tests to be done later. And over the years, as testing technology got better and better, his samples were retested and the results were clear.

And I know when you hear it, just hearing the acronym NIST, your eyes glaze over, but stick with me. This is actually really important and these things are connected. NIST has released a final set of encryption standards where people Any file encrypted using this new standard is designed to withstand the attack of a quantum computer.

I sat down with my first quantum computer in a lunchroom at Cleveland Clinic last year, and it was an interesting experience. I don't have time to dive in deep here, but I'll post a link about that machine in the comments. Quantum computers are a relatively new category of computers. There aren't many of them in the world at this point, but they're coming.

And as with all this stuff, you've heard me say it before, my first reaction is, wow, that's so cool. It's going to help so many people. And my next reaction is, oh, wow, this is going to be really bad from a cyber perspective. Here's why. Current encryption capability models are like a child's toy for quantum computers.

And as those quantum capabilities expand in our world, the bad guys will eventually get their hands on those quantum computers. And today, When you have laptops or thumb drives or files exfiltrated from your organization and your reaction is, I think we're okay. All those files were encrypted. Just remember they're encrypted with today's technology.

And those encryption standards are again, the equivalent to tinker toys, to quantum computers. When the bad guys steal those files, the ones that are encrypted with today's encryption standards, they may find the files to be uncrackable, but that doesn't mean they throw them away. They take them. And they put them in a library, and they just wait.

The adversaries know that the technology continues to improve, and they'll be able to eventually crack those encrypted files wide open. Just like those Lance Armstrong blood tests that were held in storage all those years, newer technology revealed his secret, and quantum computing may very well reveal your secret.

This is all going to take time, of course, but as it turns out, in our healthcare IT and cybersecurity world, all the objects are actually closer than they appear when looking into the future. So, start thinking now about preparing for these new NIST standards and new capabilities. And That comment's not just for health systems, it's for all the folks who build products, the ones that we use every day.

You need to be paying attention to this too, because that's ultimately how we take care of patients and families. All the details on this story And all the others are at thisweekhealth. com slash news. Thanks again to our two minute drill sponsor, healthcare cyber partner, Fortified Health Security with a 98 percent client retention rate and three consecutive best in class awards, Fortified's exclusive focus on healthcare cybersecurity makes them the go to partner for healthcare organizations wanting to strengthen their security posture.

Find out more at fortifiedhealthsecurity. com. That's it for today's two minute drill. Thanks for being here. Stay a little paranoid. I'll see you around campus.