A future-focused security audit discusses risks where attackers collect encrypted data today, anticipating they will...

The Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Cryptography and Quantum Computing section introduces the concept known as “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later”. This threat model describes adversaries capturing encrypted data today, even if they cannot decrypt it immediately, with the expectation that future quantum computers will be able to break currently secure public-key algorithms such as RSA and ECC.

Option A accurately reflects this concept.

Option B describes a method (Shor’s algorithm) but not the threat model itself.

Option C is unrelated to cryptographic attacks.

Option D refers to quantum communication attacks, not classical encrypted data harvesting.

CEH emphasizes post-quantum cryptography as a mitigation strategy.