AI is transforming how organisations create, use and retain data, and the scale is staggering. From raw training datasets and proprietary model weights to compliance logs, enterprise data has evolved from an operational byproduct into a strategic asset. In India the momentum is unmistakable: NASSCOM reports that 87% of surveyed enterprises are advancing through AI adoption, while initiatives like IndiaAI Mission are accelerating that shift. As AI moves from pilot to production, the infrastructure underpinning it is being fundamentally reimagined.
As AI adoption deepens, the infrastructure supporting it must do more than scale. It must ensure that data is kept secure, trustworthy, and usable throughout its entire operational life. That matters more than it might appear. Enterprise storage hardware typically remains in service for five years or more. Data written to a drive today may still be sitting on that same infrastructure when quantum computing reaches practical capability. The question organisations need to ask is not whether their data is secure today. It is whether it will still be secure in five years.
AI is changing what data is worth
AI is accelerating data growth, but it extends the useful life of information. Data stored today may be needed years from now for compliance, analytics, or retraining future AI models.
Much of this information resides on high-capacity, cost-efficient hard drives, which store approximately 80% of cloud data. While flash technologies support performance-sensitive workloads, HDDs remain the foundation of large-scale storage because they deliver the capacity, economics and reliability required to store data efficiently at scale. As a result, organisations must consider how to protect not only today's data, but also its future.
The emerging quantum challenge
Today, current encryption technologies remain effective against conventional threats. However, quantum computing is expected to challenge some of the cryptographic methods used for authentication and key exchange and that timeline could be shorter than many organisations anticipate. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimates that quantum computers could defeat current cryptographic protections within a decade.
This has led to concerns around โharvest now, decrypt laterโ attacks, where encrypted data is collected today with the expectation that future quantum capabilities could potentially decrypt it later. For organisations storing sensitive intellectual property, research data or AI training datasets, this means security decisions made today could have implications for years to come.
Why encryption is necessary
Security is often viewed through the lens of data encryption, and with good reason. Self-encrypting drives (SEDs) provide always-on, hardware-based AES-256 encryption that helps protect data at rest without impacting performance. But protecting data alone is no longer enough.
Storage devices themselves must be trusted. Firmware, authentication mechanisms, provisioning processes, and diagnostic tools all play a role in ensuring a drive operates securely throughout its lifecycle.
If attackers compromise a device's firmware or trust architecture, broader security controls can be undermined regardless of how data is encrypted elsewhere in the system. Storage security is therefore not a peripheral concern. It is a critical component of overall cyber resilience.
Bringing post-quantum protection to HDDs
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) addresses this by integrating quantum-resistant algorithms directly into the trust architecture of the drive, not just the data it holds.
PQC technologies should be incorporated into areas such as secure key establishment, firmware authentication, secure provisioning, and trusted diagnostics. These capabilities should be designed in alignment with established NIST post-quantum standards and implemented using hybrid approaches that combine classical cryptography with quantum-resistant algorithms.
This will mean the mechanisms responsible for establishing trust, validating firmware integrity and protecting administrative functions can help protect against both conventional and future quantum-enabled attacks. With the operational service life of HDDs often spanning 5 years (or more), implementing PQC today helps protect against quantum-based threats that may not materialize for several years, but that we know are coming.
Trust must be designed in, not added later
Storage innovation is no longer defined merely by capacity or density. As enterprises deploy Sovereign AI pipelines, build out high-capacity data center clusters, and mandate strict Zero Trust architectures, cryptographic integrity becomes an architectural prerequisite.
Security cannot be retrofitted but it must match the operational lifespan of the hardware and the enduring value of the training data. By embedding PQC into HDD root-of-trust mechanisms today, organisations will be able to do more than help secure data at rest: they can build a resilient foundation capable of scaling AI future without compounding tomorrowโs quantum risk.
As India's enterprises scale AI across banking, healthcare and public infrastructure, the data they generate today will underpin the models, decisions and compliance obligations of tomorrow. The IndiaAI Mission and frameworks like the DPDP Act are building the governance foundations. The infrastructure layer must keep pace. For organisations building AI systems designed to last, trust must be designed in from the start.
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