GAITHERSBURG, Md. — The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has finalized its principal set of encryption algorithms designed to withstand cyberattacks from a quantum computer.

Researchers around the world are racing to build quantum computers that would operate in radically different ways from ordinary computers and could break the current encryption that provides security and privacy for just about everything we do online. The algorithms announced today are specified in the first completed standards from NIST’s post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standardization project, and are ready for immediate use.

The three new standards are built for the future. Quantum computing technology is developing rapidly, and some experts predict that a device with the capability to break current encryption methods could appear within a decade, threatening the security and privacy of individuals, organizations and entire nations.

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The standards — containing the encryption algorithms’ computer code, instructions for how to implement them, and their intended uses — are the result of an eight-year effort managed by NIST, which has a long history of developing encryption. The agency has rallied the world’s cryptography experts to conceive, submit and then evaluate cryptographic algorithms that could resist the assault of quantum computers. The nascent technology could revolutionize fields from weather forecasting to fundamental physics to drug design, but it carries threats as well.