Post-quantum cryptography: what to do now
NIST published its first post-quantum standards this week. You don’t need to panic, but you do need a list.
On 13 August NIST published its first three post-quantum standards: ML-KEM for key exchange, and ML-DSA and SLH-DSA for signatures. They’re built to resist future quantum computers, which could break RSA and the elliptic-curve crypto we use everywhere today.
Nobody has that quantum computer yet. So why care now? Because of “harvest now, decrypt later”: traffic recorded today can be decrypted in ten years. If your data still matters in ten years, such as health, legal or state data, the clock is already running.
What I’d do this year:
- Make a list of where you use encryption: TLS, VPNs, signed software, stored data, partners’ APIs.
- Note what lives long. Data that must stay secret for years goes first.
- Ask your vendors about their post-quantum plans. Browsers and big CDNs are already testing hybrid key exchange.
- Avoid hardcoding algorithms in your own code, so you can swap them later.
No rush to rip anything out. Just don’t be the company that discovers in 2030 it has no idea where its crypto is.