Miami, FL, May 28, 2026 –(PR.com)– Appointment brings to Qtonic Quantum’s Executive Advisory Board one of the most senior operators in U.S. electric sector cybersecurity, as post-quantum threats move from theory into operational risk for the grid.
Qtonic Quantum, the leading provider of quantum risk and vulnerability intelligence tools and services, today announced the appointment of Scott Aaronson as Senior Advisor for Critical Infrastructure and Energy Sector Cybersecurity. The appointment, effective May 18, 2026, brings to Qtonic Quantum’s Executive Advisory Board nearly two decades of executive leadership at the intersection of utility operations, federal cyber policy, and all-hazards resilience. The announcement comes during hardwear.io USA 2026 in Santa Clara, where the Qtonic Quantum team is on the conference floor through May 30.
Aaronson is Principal of Aaronson Resilience Advisors and previously served as Senior Vice President for Energy Security and Industry Operations at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), where he led the U.S. investor-owned electric sector’s national cybersecurity and resilience strategy. In that role he served as Secretary of the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) — the principal liaison between the U.S. electric sector and senior federal government officials on cybersecurity, emergency preparedness, and all-hazards response. His career has spanned executive engagement with the White House, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, CISA, FERC, and NERC.
“Post-quantum readiness in the electric sector doesn’t get done in slide decks. It gets done in conversations between utility leadership, regulators, and technology providers, in the operational language of the grid. Scott has been running that conversation for over a decade. Having him on our Executive Advisory Board changes what we can do in this sector, and we’re glad he’s chosen to build it with us.” – David Cohen, Co-Founder, Qtonic Quantum
The U.S. electric sector faces a compounding set of cryptographic risks. Industrial control systems, smart meters, distribution automation, and bulk-power telemetry all depend on cryptographic protections that quantum-capable adversaries are widely expected to defeat within the next decade. “Harvest now, decrypt later” threats — adversaries collecting encrypted utility data today for future decryption — already make post-quantum migration a present-day operational decision rather than a future planning exercise.
“The electric sector has always been a target. What’s changed is the time horizon on cryptographic risk. Post-quantum migration isn’t a five-year planning exercise — it’s a decisions-this-quarter problem for any utility leadership team taking the threat seriously. Qtonic Quantum is doing the vendor-neutral measurement and hardware validation work the sector needs. The technical rigor and the regulatory awareness are in the same place, which is rare. I’m in.” – Scott Aaronson, Senior Advisor for Critical Infrastructure and Energy Sector Cybersecurity, Qtonic Quantum
hardwear.io USA 2026 runs May 26–30 at the Santa Clara Marriott, gathering hardware security researchers, embedded systems engineers, firmware analysts, and PSIRT teams from across the semiconductor, IoT, automotive, and critical infrastructure communities. The intersection with Aaronson’s appointment is direct: post-quantum migration in the electric sector ultimately cuts through hardware roots of trust, embedded controllers, and the cryptographic primitives that ship in silicon underneath the grid. The hardware and embedded community at hardwear.io is where much of that migration eventually gets implemented — making the conference a natural launch point for an appointment focused on bridging policy, operations, and the technical stack that runs the electric system.
Aaronson’s appointment also reflects a broader debate among critical infrastructure security experts over whether current U.S. policy concentrates too much quantum-era risk on a single cryptographic approach. Dr. David Mussington, who advises Qtonic Quantum and previously served as one of three Presidentially appointed officials at CISA responsible for the security of 16 critical infrastructure sectors, has argued that the electric grid sits among the highest-consequence systems exposed to that risk.
“The United States has concentrated its quantum-era cryptographic resilience on a single mathematical bet, with no physics-based fallback, and bulk power control networks are precisely the Tier-1 infrastructure where the cost of being wrong cannot be recovered through patching or migration after the fact. In a deteriorating cyber threat environment, deferral is not neutral. Every month of delay is a month in which adversarial capability matures and the gap between what attackers can do and what defenders can govern grows wider. Closing that gap in the electric sector requires people who can translate national cyber policy into the operational language of utility leadership. Scott Aaronson has spent his career doing exactly that.” – Dr. David Mussington, Advisor, Qtonic Quantum; Former Executive Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security, CISA; ICIT Fellow and Co-Chair, ICIT Center for FCEB Resilience
Media Note: Members of the trade press attending hardwear.io USA 2026 can arrange to meet the Qtonic Quantum team on the conference floor through May 30. To schedule a briefing, contact Jessica Gold at Media@QtonicQuantum.com or +1 (866) 4-QTONIC.
About Qtonic Quantum
Qtonic Quantum is the leading provider of quantum risk and vulnerability intelligence tools and services. The company is vendor-neutral, providing rigorous post-quantum cryptography assessment, validation, and migration intelligence without selling encryption products of its own. Through its product suite — including QScout, QScout Pulse, QStrike, QSolve, and the Qtonic Quantum Lab — the company helps Fortune 1000 enterprises, federal agencies, and financial institutions identify, validate, and migrate cryptographic exposure ahead of Q-Day. Qtonic Quantum is headquartered in Miami, Florida. Post-Quantum Ready. Continuously™. Learn more at QtonicQuantum.com.
About Aaronson Resilience Advisors
Aaronson Resilience Advisors is a strategic advisory firm helping critical infrastructure operators, technology providers, and federal stakeholders strengthen their cybersecurity posture, all-hazards resilience, and regulatory positioning. The firm draws on decades of executive-level engagement across the U.S. electric sector, the federal government, and the trade-association community.
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Qtonic Quantum
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