A recent experience in my own company has highlighted the critical importance of addressing risk when it becomes known. The additional pressure and stress an operationally strategic challenge presents, especially when a mitigation opportunity has been missed, can be near fatal. Especially as risk mitigation is often how I would describe our initial client engagements in management consultancy advisory.

On the topic of known risks, I want to focus on those faced when following in the footsteps of their peers when it comes to technology and critically, data security. The first and most important question every leader should ask is: Does your risk framework measure strategically important technology purchases based on peers decisions or unfit procurement frameworks, as seen in recent technology and infrastructure projects? Or does our civil service evaluate data security, insight, and fit for our strategic needs? If the answer is the former, as I suspect for many it is politics, given the breath of challenges and lack of expertise in these fields — the question then becomes: Can this risk weighting be changed for our country to focus on the latter?

This article references a very interesting field of research led by Florian Neukart on the Quantum Memory Matrix (QMM) describing the theory that space time acts as a memory (Neukart, 2024). This is important because it has significant impacts for the continued development of Quantum Computing, by blending classical physics with quantum physics theories and could see the price point of this technology become affordable to all businesses within the decade. Leveraging this technology would provide significant economic competitive advantage through generating intellectual property from data assets for our businesses, however, our ‘emerging technology’ elements of any trade deals, especially with the EU become critical to the scale of any economic gains (UK Government, 2024).

Through supercharging the speed and accuracy of machine learning models being used by businesses, this technology cannot just secure critical, confidential data assets but drive automation into our business product and service offerings. We believe current risk assessment frameworks, particularly when it comes to strategic technology purchases in the government are fundamentally focused on the wrong risks, based on those we experience in international and domestic business. These risks include decisions made by peers and often due to their perceived insignificance, attention is focused on the wrong risk’s. As a result, productivity objectives are not achieved, and investment is diverted from other strategic projects, again limiting the growth created. In the context of peer decisions on technology purchases and regulatory frameworks for our services business, the limitation of delivery options and the widely reported business interruption and financial impacts of traditional technologies for core systems provide a known example of this risk and the challenges it can create for business leaders.

In our experience, when it comes to strategic technology purchases, the government does not take an active role in guiding businesses on the threats experienced in cyber defence, leading to businesses current risk assessment frameworks generally focusing on the wrong risks. This could be very dangerous for a business, especially as bad actors grow increasingly sophisticated in executing data breaches with apparent impunity, while data and investment strategies become ever more intertwined. This month’s news of the Quantas breach, and recent incidents involving M&S and the Co-op are reminders of the vulnerability of even well-established brands (BBC News, 2025; Financial Times, 2025).

The problematic trend is compounded by the evolution of quantum computing. A new scientific theory that space-time acts as a memory led by Florian Neukart, has already helped to tackle a key problem in quantum computing. It is also seeing glimmers of bigger breakthroughs on the not-too-distant horizon (Neukart, 2024). The ability to manipulate space-time has great advancement possibilities for humanity as we lean more on the fabric and building blocks of the universe, but also any significant scientific breakthroughs bring inherits risks, especially with the speed that new research is being deployed into emerging technologies.

The advancements in quantum computing in our view, present a huge long-term risk for UK business — and failing to get ahead of this challenge, especially when handling some of the most corporately sensitive information, could prove fatal, even for businesses with the strongest reputations if any data breach is severe enough.

While we strongly advocate for data security to be central to any risk framework fit for purpose in the current global markets, the truth is, quantum physics is still in a very exciting exploratory stage. However, its output has already seen huge advancements in encryption and security hacking capabilities and the very real supercharging of machine learning algorithms in their speed and compute power (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2024).

The risk posed by this emerging technology to all businesses is much more closely connected to malicious business applications, therefore trading risk, than many business leaders will appreciate.

No matter the type of technology implemented, one thing is certain: risk management and mitigation is essential for the long-term success of the UK economy. Reputations take a long time to forge and can be undone in a moment. As such, I would like to discuss the question with the conservative party: is this something the shadow cabinet are willing to let play out, or does the party want to invest time with an upcoming UK management consultancy whose first clients included some of the largest technology, legal and FS businesses?

References

BBC News. (2025) Qantas confirms customer data breach after cyberattack. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/qantas-data-breach [Accessed 17 July 2025].

Financial Times. (2025) M&S and Co-op hit by data security lapses. [Online] Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/ms-coop-data-breach [Accessed 17 July 2025].

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (2024) Post-Quantum Cryptography: Finalists and Standards. [Online] Available at: https://www.nist.gov/pqcrypto [Accessed 17 July 2025].

Neukart, F. (2024) The Quantum Memory Matrix: A Unified Framework for the Black Hole Information Paradox. [Online] Available at: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/12/1039 [Accessed 17 July 2025].

UK Government. (2024) UK-EU Emerging Technologies and Trade Framework. Department for Business and Trade. [Online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications [Accessed 17 July 2025].