September 5, 2024 – Growing to more than 125 participating cyber researchers from industry and academia, the global Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Coalition published a comparison of PQC standards being defined by international government regulatory bodies. The coalition is helping ready the cyber community for the post-quantum transition, working in parallel with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence’s PQC Migration Project to provide comprehensive assessment and guidance.

“NIST has approved its first three federal standards for PQC algorithms addressing cryptographic and digital signature schemes, allowing for broad deployment of PQC,” said Wen Masters, vice president, cyber technologies, MITRE. “Through our collective efforts, we want the nation to take advantage of quantum opportunities and be prepared to defend itself from quantum-enabled threats to national and economic security.”

Data encrypted online with today’s methods can be harvested now for decryption later by an adversary with access to a cryptographically relevant quantum computer.

“The coalition comes at an important time,” said Matt Mickelson, lead coordinator of the coalition and senior cyber principal for science and technology at MITRE. “These threats target not just personal, commercial, military, and intelligence data but also the digital signatures that identify trusted entities and contracts. National and international standards create a common framework for addressing such threats.”

Celebrating its one-year anniversary this month, the PQC Coalition aims to accelerate the adoption of quantum-resistant methods in advance of any cyber threats posed by quantum computation. Spearheaded by MITRE and SandboxAQ, the coalition brings together tech industry leaders, cryptographic researchers, and engineers including from PQShield, IBM, Microsoft, Comcast, CryptoNext Security, PQSecure, QuSecure, SecureG and University of Waterloo.

The coalition surveyed international regulatory bodies that are defining the quantum-resistance requirements to be followed by technology vendors used in national or government security systems. They created a reference of international PQC requirements and are identifying alignment and misalignment areas, which could pose challenges for international vendor compliance and interoperability.

Coalition participants are collaborating on four workstreams regarding standards, education, implementation, and agility. Together, these collective efforts help to ready the nation and the world for the post-quantum transition.