Webinars

Many of the public-key cryptographic standards we use today will be vulnerable to attacks from a large-scale quantum computer. To address this threat, NIST initiated a rigorous process in 2016 to select quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms to standardize. This talk will review this NIST PQC standardization effort, which culminated in the publication of the first set of PQC standards in August 2024, with ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA. The talk will also detail the ongoing standardization of additional signature scheme(s), called “the on-ramp”, and the selection of HQC for an additional KEM standard.

Crucially, the talk will outline the necessary transition to those new standards. Migration timelines are given in NIST IR 8547, which proposes that currently approved quantum-vulnerable public-key algorithms will be disallowed after 2035. The talk will showcase the efforts of the National Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence’s Migration to PQC project, which is helping the community by tackling adoption issues, testing how different systems work together, and providing advice to speed up the global shift to secure cryptography against quantum threats.

Quynh Dang is a member of the Cryptographic Technology Group (CTG) at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He has worked in the field of applied cryptography for 20+ years. His interests include symmetric key, asymmetric key and post-quantum cryptography, and protocol security.