Florence Luy asks the question: "Is the writing on the wall for 1024-bit (RSA) encryption?"
Dutch mathematician Hendrik Willem Lenstra: "The answer to that question is an unqualified yes."

Florence Luy, Hendrik Lenstra, “A mighty number falls”, 21 May 2007, École Polytechnicque Fédérale de Lausanne

"Many applications stay in use for much longer than anticipated, but during the extended lifetime they will be functioning in an environment for which they have not been designed, resulting in completely new vulnerabilities and risks."

"Many crypto-systems considered robust have been broken after a certain amount of time (between 10-20 years).  ... We need to build crypto-systems that offer long term security, for example for protecting financial and medical information (medical information such as our DNA may be sensitive information with impact on our children, our grandchildren and beyond)."