I guess because computational power is near unlimited and they are well past quantum computing... maybe the security scheme involves more than mathematical encryption, maybe the transmission medium? Could also be expensive because they have to use one-time pad encryption for every secure transmission. It's the only encryption scheme that cannot be cracked regardless of advances in computing but requires every transmission use a unique one-time cypher that is expended upon use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
In some science fiction secure encryption ends up returning to one-time pad encryption because computational capabilities have become so advanced. An entire economic niche is created where interstellar ships travel in-between star systems delivering shipments of one-time pad keyrings that are used for secure transmissions. Any transmissions using public-private key schemes or any scheme with reusable cyphers is considered crackable by state actors and large corporations who care enough to task the necessary computational resources. As a result secure transmissions of a sensitive nature become extremely expensive.