NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) is initiating the development of practices to ease the migration from the current set of public-key cryptographic algorithms to replacement algorithms that are resistant to quantum computer-based attacks. NIST is the US’ National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Cryptographic technologies are used throughout government and industry to authenticate the source and protect the confidentiality and integrity of information that we communicate and store. The paper describes the impact of quantum computing technology on classical cryptography, particularly on public-key cryptographic systems. This paper also introduces adoption challenges associated with post-quantum cryptography after the standardization process is completed. Planning requirements for migration to post-quantum cryptography are discussed. The paper concludes with NIST’s next steps for helping with the migration to post-quantum cryptography.