“The battle against fraud and scams will undoubtedly demand new innovations, adaptability, and teamwork from the payments sector, as fraudsters will persist in their attempts to steal personal data and money,” Bullock stated during the Bradfield Oration, as reported by the Daily Telegraph this morning.

“A significant concern is the threat posed by advancements in quantum computing, which could eventually compromise current encryption standards,” she continued.

“To counter this, transitioning card payments to the advanced encryption standard (AES) is crucial, as it offers a quantum-resistant solution.”

Research conducted by the University of NSW last year revealed that security algorithms protecting global IT networks, which would require millions of years to crack with today’s supercomputers, might be decrypted within days or even hours once quantum computing becomes a reality.

“Currently, IT networks employing widely-used cryptographic security algorithms like RSA are well-protected against hacking, even with the application of supercomputers,” explained lead researcher Dr. Fida Hasan during the study.

“Using current conventional supercomputers, it would still take millions or even billions of years to hack those security cryptosystems, but with the power of quantum computers, the time taken to decrypt those algorithms would be significantly reduced, potentially to a day or even less.

“There are some predictions that suggest a quantum computer, with the ability to rapidly decrypt cryptographic security algorithms, could be developed within the next decade.”

When asked whether the emerging technology was the biggest threat to Australia’s payments system, Bullock admitted it is frightening.

“It’s something I worry about,” she said.

“If you believe what they say (about) quantum computing, what takes 200 years to decrypt now, to break, will take a matter of minutes. So it is a big threat.

“But I have to say … advanced encryption standards have been developed to meet that challenge of quantum computing.

“At the moment, we trust our financial institutions to keep our data safe and they do that through encryption.

“So it is a worry that we need to make sure we keep up with that quantum computing situation, because otherwise it’s not safe.”

Australians lost a combined $173.8 million to scams and financial fraud in the first half of the year, up 26 per cent from the same time last year, according to the ACCC.

“Technology is helping scammers reach more people than ever before and we see scams becoming more sophisticated and harder for people to detect,” ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said in August.