At the EDUCAUSE annual conference in Denver, some technology leaders say quantum will be the next big thing, and colleges and universities need to consider updating institutional security efforts before they’re obsolete. Not only will this make it easier for bad actors to breach higher education data storage systems, but even encrypted data that was previously collected and stored by bad actors will be able to be decoded quickly. As data breaches in higher education are growing more common, this is a reality higher education leaders need to confront now, David Seidl, vice president for IT and CIO at Miami University in Ohio, said at the EDUCAUSE annual conference Thursday. The good news, Seidl said, is that you don’t need to know much about the technology behind quantum computing, networking, sensing or materials to start creating an institutional quantum strategy. Vendors may not have all the answers right now, he said, but now is a good time to get a pulse on when they plan to start integrating quantum-resistant algorithms.