The world is at a tipping point, with the cryptographic systems of the past decades going through a paradigm shift. While the developments in quantum computing offer the possibility to revolutionize the way various industries approach complex problems, their potential ability to break public-key cryptography threatens data confidentiality, integrity, and authentication for organizations. This has a network of impact, going well beyond being merely an IT or operational problem, and puts the security of current and future digital communications, data, and transactions at risk.

Cryptographic risk lies both in digital infrastructure and operations, but also in software code and products. From a business value chain perspective, this renders all stages in which public-key cryptography is used vulnerable to compromise and disruption.

The transition to quantum-resistant architectures will be the largest-scale cryptographic migration to be carried out. While the industry has learned a great deal from the previous transitions, the migration to post-quantum cryptography is estimated to require much higher levels of resources, investment, and technical expertise, involving cooperation of different stakeholders with shared and independent capabilities.

Author: Ozgun Pelit