January 15 and 16, 2025 - Austin, Texas, US | Online
Conference Details
The PKI Consortium hosted its third hybrid Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Conference on Wednesday, January 15, and Thursday, January 16, 2025. The event took place at the Thompson Conference Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, US.
This conference was a premier gathering for decision-makers, technical leaders, and industry influencers from both public and private sectors who are deeply invested in the future of cryptography. Attendees experienced a diverse program featuring keynote speeches, breakout sessions, and panel discussions led by thought leaders in PQC.
The conference was open to all individuals interested in Post-Quantum Cryptography and was not limited to PKI Consortium members.
The conference featured a balanced program with strategic, informational, and educational sessions in the Plenary room, and technical deep dives in the Breakout room. Attendees enjoyed keynote speeches, interactive sessions, and panel discussions led by Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) experts. To ensure a focus on education, speakers were not permitted to promote products or services during presentations.
Event agenda
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Event time · ChicagoYour time
Agenda for 2025-01-15, times in America/Chicago
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Chicago
TimeChicagoYour time
Plenary
Breakout
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Registration 30 min
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Plenary
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Plenary
Professor Aaronson will provide a personal perspective on the current state and future prospects of quantum computing, addressing its implications for cryptography and the pressing question of how long current public-key cryptographic systems might remain secure. Following his talk, Professor Aaronson will engage in an open Q&A session, inviting discussion on any aspects of quantum computing.
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Plenary
In August 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reached a pivotal moment by releasing the first three finalized Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) standards: FIPS 203, FIPS 204, and FIPS 205. These standards mark the beginning of a new era in cryptography, designed to protect against the future threat of quantum computing.
In this presentation, Mr. Andrew Regenscheid, Manager Cryptographic Technology Group at NIST, will provide an in-depth update on the newly established FIPS PQC standards. He will also discuss the ongoing efforts to standardize additional cryptographic algorithms, ensuring preparedness for potential vulnerabilities in the current standards.
Mr. Bill Newhouse, a cybersecurity engineer and Project Lead at the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), will explain the urgency of transitioning to these new quantum-resistant cryptographic standards. He will also share practical strategies and best practices to facilitate the migration from existing public-key cryptographic systems to these next-generation standards.
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Break 30 min
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Plenary
In this presentation, Dr. Morgan Stern, Senior Subject Matter Expert on Quantum-Resistant Cryptography within the National Security Agency (NSA)'s Cybersecurity Directorate, will discuss the NSA's approach to transitioning National Security Systems to a post-quantum future. Dr. Stern will highlight key strategies, challenges, and milestones in preparing for the quantum threat, ensuring secure and resilient systems for national defense.
Breakout
There is a hesitance to start the migration to quantum-safe solutions, which leads to slower adoption of PQC. This stems from multiple PQC algorithms to choose from, each having specific strong and weaker points, especially with respect to performance, storage and bandwidth. How to deploy these? Hybrid or not? What is the impact on my application? By helping (financial) organisation in migrating their application and testing them in an operational setting, we capture system effects and benchmarking results. In this presentation, I will discuss the results and experiences gained during the migration and share common pitfalls.
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PlenaryBeginners
This presentation will focus on the pragmatic steps IT teams can take now to prepare for deployment of post-quantum cryptographic algorithms once it becomes practical. This conversation will directly connect the steps back to IT teams’ day-to-day tasks, as it relates to certificate management, and help practitioners identify exactly what they need to do today to begin the process of being post-quantum ready. The presentation will go over: (1) the necessary steps for industry standards bodies to clarify requirements for the new NIST standards; (2) what software, hardware, and services vendors need to do to incorporate support and possible timelines for this support; (3) how enterprises can apply these updates, (4) what you, as an IT manager, can do today to begin the transformation to PQC, and (5) what a likely post-quantum certificate migration plan might look like, including the use of hybrid certificates.
Breakout
Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) are intricate systems to design, deploy, and maintain. As post-quantum cryptography (PQC) becomes a reality, one of the most challenging decisions will be algorithm selection. Historically, this has been straightforward—for example, using RSA-2048-SHA256 consistently throughout the PKI hierarchy. In a PQC world, this approach becomes less viable due to tradeoffs that may require different algorithms or parameters at each layer. For instance, long-term secure algorithms might be optimal for root CAs, high-performance algorithms for issuing CAs, and bandwidth-efficient algorithms for end entities.
Hybrid approaches further complicate these decisions, offering additional security or migration flexibility depending on the use case. This talk explores a "toolbox" of migration mechanisms for X.509 and presents example PKI hierarchies tailored to specific scenarios, illustrating how to navigate the complexity of algorithm choices for a graceful transition to post-quantum cryptography.
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PlenaryPanel dicussion
This panel will bring together industry leaders from the Financial, Mobile, and Healthcare sectors to discuss the critical transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). Panelists from leading banks, the GSMA Association, DirectTrust, and other key stakeholders will explore the growing threat posed by quantum computing to traditional cryptographic systems. They will discuss the unique challenges each industry faces in adopting quantum-resistant solutions, including technical, regulatory, and operational hurdles. Key topics will include the current state of readiness, strategies for smooth transitions, the role of standards bodies, and collaborative efforts across industries. The discussion will also address timelines, cost considerations, and the importance of future-proofing critical infrastructure to ensure security in a post-quantum world.
BreakoutDevelopers
At last years PQC Conference we benchmarked Hardware Securtiy Modules with Dilithium. Now that FIPS-204 is released, it is time to forget about Dilithium and do production level integrations using ML-DSA.
This session shows PKI application integration for issuing certificates, with a number of HSMs that are ready for ML-DSA. We will highlight how easy, or hard, it is to integrate using PKCS#11 or REST APIs. Of course there will be benchmarks of certificate issuance comparing ML-DSA against classic algorithms. Let's see what else we are able to squeeze in until January.
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Lunch 60 min
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Plenary
2024 saw NIST’s milestone release of the first certified PQC algorithms. As 2025 begins, it is more urgent than ever to “get your house in order” with Quantum Readiness. We will discuss these current & future risks and outline how to effectively counter against evolving threats with strategic and tactical steps within a PQC readiness plan. This session will also identify some of the industry challenges affecting today’s PKI, IoT, TLS & Code Signing. To conclude, strategies will be presented citing real-world examples including PQC code signing that specifically describe ecosystem collaboration and testing within critical enterprise applications and infrastructure.
Breakout
The list of standardization based on Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and the NIST IR 8547 initial public draft signal that organizations should begin preparing for their transitions to PQC standards. While transitions to PQC standards cannot be addressed in isolation due to interdependencies that organizations depend on, there are many uncertainties that prevent organizations from taking actionable steps. In order to navigate the complexities of transitions, an online quantum readiness assessment tool is developed to guide organizations. With a multi-dimensional approach, the tool recognizes various dimensions that organizations should consider when transitioning their existing infrastructures. What sets this tool apart from other available tool is its foundation in the scientific methods, utilizing empirical data and addressing context specific transition challenges relevant to PKIs. Since it remains crucial for organizations to gain an overview of transition progress, the tool allows organizations to focus on areas that have low readiness levels and adjust their strategies with a set of possible recommendations.
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Plenary
Transitioning from legacy asymmetric algorithms to PQC algorithms also means upgrading your PKI and certificates, however the financial services industry has its own needs which no longer aligns with the CA/Browser Forum, the IETF, NIST, or other programs. Consequently, the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X9 Financial Services has launched the X9 Financial PKI as an alternative for PQC readiness and crypto-agility to banks, merchants, and third-party financial service providers. This session discusses the issues, the requirements, the technologies, the X9 Financial PKI program, and its first implementation using PQC enabled certificates.
BreakoutMigration
Secure e-mail communication is a natural fit for hybrid cryptography, offering long-term confidentiality and non-repudiation for users. This talk introduces a prototype system comprising a Certificate Authority, Certificate Management System, and an extended Open Source client application, including an integration module for Microsoft Outlook.
The presentation explores the selection criteria for hybrid schemes and the rationale behind choosing Composite and ICA approaches to facilitate PKI and S/MIME migration. It also shares insights from implementing and using pure PQC, Composite, and ICA hybrid constructions. Topics include certificate creation, client enrollment, and securely signing and encrypting e-mail messages using S/MIME across various cryptographic configurations, emphasizing the hybrid integration of classical and post-quantum secure cryptography.
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PlenaryWebPKI
NIST has finalized the first set of post-quantum algorithms, and post-quantum key agreement has been enabled by default in browsers for over a year. Why are signatures lagging behind? This talk provides the latest updates in a fast-moving ecosystem, a recap of the challenges in migrating to post-quantum certificates, and an overview of ongoing efforts to make post-quantum signatures practical in the WebPKI.
In a followup breakout session, we go into detail into some of the more promising proposals for coping with post-quantum certificates.
Breakout
Secure boot is hard. Quantum-safe secure boot is even harder. It starts with the choice of a suitable algorithm. On the signature verification side, conflicting regulatory requirements on Post-Quantum/Traditional (PQ/T) hybrid mean there is no silver-bullet, while on the signature generation side, key management challenges and the lack of available end-to-end quantum-safe solutions further complicate the decision process.
In this talk we highlight open issues at various stages of the secure boot lifecycle.
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Break 30 min
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PlenaryPanel discussion
This panel will delve deeper into the decisions organizations face in securing their systems for the post-quantum era. Should resources be directed toward extending the life of legacy algorithms—such as by increasing RSA key sizes or adopting higher-order elliptic curves—to address immediate security concerns? Or is it more prudent to focus exclusively on transitioning to quantum-resistant algorithms? This session will explore the technical and strategic trade-offs of both approaches, offering insights into the urgency and complexity of achieving quantum readiness.
BreakoutWebPKI
Post-quantum signatures are not easily deployable in the WebPKI. Using the signature algorithms recently standardized by NIST as drop-in replacements for existing classical algorithms on the Web would incur significant performance degradations, making this approach infeasible unless a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer (CRQCs) is imminent. There’s a real risk that post-quantum signatures do not see widespread adoption before CRQCs become a reality, unless we make changes to how signatures are used in the WebPKI.
This talk dives into several of the more promising proposals for making post-quantum signatures deployable, from TLS extensions to reduce the number of transmitted signatures, to using key agreement as an authentication mechanism, to complete overhauls of the WebPKI. We discuss ongoing work to evaluate the feasibility of each of these proposals and to address known unknowns.
(this is a 60 minute session)
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PlenaryPanel discussion
As organizations prepare for the post-quantum era, hybrid cryptography has emerged as a contentious strategy. Advocates see it as a pragmatic bridge, combining classical algorithms with quantum-resistant counterparts—or even multiple quantum-resistant algorithms—to ensure security during the transition. Critics, however, argue that hybrid solutions introduce complexity, increase attack surfaces, and may delay full adoption of streamlined quantum-safe algorithms.
This panel brings together experts with diverse perspectives to debate the merits and drawbacks of hybrid cryptography. Should hybrid solutions be embraced as a stepping stone, or do they risk complicating the path to quantum readiness? Attendees will explore the technical, operational, and strategic implications of hybrid approaches, including the potential benefits and challenges of combining multiple quantum-resistant algorithms.
Breakout
Continuation of prior session
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Plenary
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Networking 120 min
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End of Day One
Event time · ChicagoYour time
Agenda for 2025-01-16, times in America/Chicago
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Chicago
TimeChicagoYour time
Plenary
Breakout
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Registration 30 min
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Plenary
In this presentation, Mr. Andrew Regenscheid, a distinguished expert from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will take you on a deep dive into NIST’s standardization efforts for additional signature schemes.
In October 2024, NIST announced 14 Second-Round candidates chosen from 40 First-Round submissions, including CROSS, LESS, and even MAYO, which might bring a bit of flavor to the new algorithms.
These algorithms were selected based on rigorous evaluations of security, performance, and unique algorithm characteristics, reflecting NIST’s ongoing commitment to diversifying post-quantum cryptographic standards. Dr. Moody will discuss each selected scheme's potential, addressing key innovations and the next steps in the standardization process.
Breakout
Just as post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has presented significant challenges for academic cryptographers, so too has it posed unique challenges for cryptographic engineers. The new PQC primitives, with their distinct characteristics compared to traditional RSA and ECC algorithms, often require substantial protocol and application redesign to accommodate them effectively. Moreover, the need for a relatively abrupt transition to PQC across the Internet's vast infrastructure has introduced additional complexities.
This presentation will provide a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in PQC standardization within the IETF. We will delve into the challenges and progress made in integrating PQC into common Internet protocols, highlighting key areas where work is still underway. Additionally, we will explore the implications of the newly standardized algorithms (ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, ML-KEM, LMS, XMSS) and discuss the strategies for their successful deployment. Finally, we will share insights from our research on PKI PQ/traditional hybrid modes, which offer a promising approach for enhancing both security and migration flexibility during the transition to a post-quantum world.
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Plenary
A number of organizations are framing the migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) as an opportunity to affect broader IT security modernization across their organizations, especially as it relates to managing the full life cycle of cryptographic algorithms, libraries, and protocols. This presentation introduces the idea of a Cryptographic Bill of Materials (CBOM), often considered a key element of this IT modernization effort. We compare and contrast CBOM with the more familiar Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), paying particular attention to how the cryptographic ecosystem poses unique challenges compared to software-at-large. For example, many cryptographic protocols include a negotiation phase over the wire, complicating the effort to know exactly which algorithm was used in any given protocol handshake. We explore the types of cryptographic assurance that a CBOM can and cannot provide for an organization. Finally, we describe how supplementary efforts such as key management, real-time cryptographic monitoring, and the ability to execute historical queries are needed to fill in the operational gaps of a CBOM.
Breakout
The Post Quantum Crypto Interoperability project started as a hackathon project at the IETF in 2022. People interested in adding PQ algorithm support into existing X.509 keys, signatures and certificates brough their tools and started to collaborate using the proposed PQC algorithms. The project has continued to grow and includes an artifact repository anyone can use for interoperability testing, a list of prototype OIDS to facilitate interoperability, and a compatibility matrix to demonstrate interoperability between users. With the experience obtained by participating in the project, its collaborators also provide valuable feedback to the emerging standards that are in development for the support of PQC. This talk will give an overview of the project, how to use it for interoperability testing and will encourage you to become a participant in the project.
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Plenary
Summarize the current state of CMVP algorithm and module validation for PQC algorithms, briefly touch on CMVP plans to speed up module validation through automation, cover 140-3 requirements for PQC algorithms within module, and briefly highlight NSA's CNSA 2.0 as an example of government requirements for PQC beyond the minimum requirements of CMVP.
Breakout
ETSI ESI (Electronic Signatures and Trust Infrastructures) develops policies, security, and technical requirements for Trust Service Providers (TSPs), including certification authorities, time-stamping authorities, and providers of remote signature creation, validation, registered e-delivery, and long-term data preservation services. ETSI ESI also maintains Trusted Lists, which enhance confidence in digital certificates and services by indicating TSP compliance with recognized approval schemes.
This presentation will explore how developments in Quantum-Safe Cryptography (QSC) and Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) affect ETSI ESI standards. It will highlight areas where changes from other standards development organizations (SDOs) may influence ETSI ESI work, discuss potential impacts on existing frameworks, and provide an estimated timeline for adoption by consumers and organizations.
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Break 30 min
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PlenaryPanel discussion
This panel will explore the integration of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) into Hardware Cryptographic Modules, with a focus on the recently released NIST standards. Panelists will examine the challenges and opportunities related to certifying PQC algorithms in compliance with established security requirements. Key topics will include performance considerations, such as the computational cost of PQC in constrained environments, the importance of ensuring interoperability and crypto agility in the process, and availability, especially the readiness of hardware vendors to meet market demand. The discussion will also address the evolving landscape of certification processes and the implications for secure communications in a Post-Quantum world.
BreakoutWebPKI
Protocol ossification delayed the rollout of TLS 1.3 for years, and has once again become a roadblock in the rollout of post-quantum cryptography. In a recent large-scale study of TLS servers, we assessed the deployment compatibility of post-quantum key agreements, uncovering surprising results and insights. Notably, we observed protocol ossification in areas beyond the well-known issue of fragmented ClientHello messages due to large key sizes. We believe more surprises will emerge with post-quantum certificates, making deployment far more complex than a “flip-of-a-switch” transition.
In this talk, we share our findings from the study, and emphasize the importance of testing early to identify potential post-quantum migration challenges rather than making assumptions about where issues may arise. We walk through the subtle deployment complexities and operational issues that can arise when managing the complexities of post-quantum PKI implementations, particularly for end-user connection stability. By offering practical insights, we hope to contribute to a smoother shift to the post-quantum era, enhancing crypto-agility and strengthening the reliability of the Web PKI as a by-product.
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Plenary
In the migration towards PQC, one of the first steps should be getting an overview of cryptographic assets in your organisation, i.e. where and why are you using which types of cryptographic algorithms, protocols, keys, etc. The result is captured in a Cryptographic Bill-Of-Materials (CBOM). Various commercial solutions exist, but how well are these addressing the problem? In 2024, as an independent research organisation, we have conducted research into crypto asset discovery tooling and their vendors, through literature research and interviews with the vendors. In this presentation, I will give an overview of the currently existing tools, the ideal setting, the gap between them and how to bridge that gap.
BreakoutWebPKI
It is sometimes argued that ML-DSA signatures will increase the size of TLS handshakes by 15KB which will affect web performance significantly. As most web connections transfer much larger amounts of data, 15KB may not impact the bottom line of the most common web performance metrics. In this session, we will present a qualitative analysis of web metrics and their relation to the TLS handshake. We will demonstrate that web connections transport large amounts of web content which takes much longer than the handshake itself. We will also analyze the web page performance metrics of top websites to showcase that an additional 15KB in the handshake will have minimal impact on the user experience. The takeaway of this session will be that ML-DSA will introduce overhead, but after using simple techniques to trim the authentication data in the handshake, the practical effect on web users will not be noticeable.
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Plenary
As organizations prepare for the transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), the NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) and its industry collaborators are researching practical approaches for migration to standardized post-quantum cryptography. This presentation by Bill Newhouse, Cybersecurity Engineer and Project Lead at NCCoE, will focus on what the collaboration has learned as it has explored cryptographic discovery and inventory tools and the interoperability of the PQC algorithms being standardized by NIST in the communication protocols and systems that rely on public-key encryption. The session will explore the real-world challenges of transitioning to PQC enabling organizations to safeguard their critical systems against quantum threats. The presentation will highlight NIST Special Publication 1800-38 which is being used to document the insights and findings of this collaborative project.
BreakoutWebPKI
Multiple studies have evaluated the impact of PQC algorithms in TLS 1.3. These studies have been focusing on server authentication with PQC signatures. To our knowledge, there has been no study focusing on mTLS authentication where the client sends a PQ certificate chain as well. Such connections could be used in Zero Trust Architectures where the client opens multiple connections to various destinations each of which uses mTLS authentication. These sessions will be double impacted by the size of the “authentication data” travelling both directions. This presentation will share experimental results of the Time-to-Last-Byte (TTLB) of mTLS connections using ML-KEM and ML-DSA and transferring small and larger amounts of data. We will evaluate different round-trips, network bandwidth and TCP initial congestion windows. We will discuss the effect of PQC on mTLS sessions and compare it to previous experiments on typical TLS connections. We will cover potential mTLS use-cases that will suffer more than others and ways to improve them.
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Plenary
In this session, Dr. Alexander Löw from Data-Warehouse will share real-world experiences from the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) regarding the implementation of NIST SP 1800-38B. Alexander will delve into the practical application of public key application discovery tools within the context of transitioning to PQC.
Participants will gain insights into the step-by-step process outlined in SP 1800-38B, including identifying public key cryptographic algorithms in use, assessing their vulnerability to quantum attacks, developing a migration strategy, and implementing new PQC algorithms.
By walking through the challenges encountered, attendees gain insights into what to expect during their transition, and learn about the role and benefits of Cryptographic Agility, Cryptographic Inventory, Cryptographic Bill of Material (CBOM), Software Bill of Material (SBOM), and Cryptographic Governance, providing comprehensive insights based on real-world experiences from following the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE).
BreakoutPanel discussion
The draft standard X9.146 Quantum TLS is nicknamed for enhancing the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol to support the NIST PQC algorithms. Security protocols such as TLS, developed and managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) various workgroups, are heavily relied upon the financial services industry. However, the financial services industry wants to transition to PQC algorithms sooner rather than later, including banks, merchants, and third party financial service providers. This session introduces the draft X9.146 standard under development by the X9F5 Financial PKI workgroup, and the software engineering for enhancing and successfully testing this standard amongst collaborating industry vendors.
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Lunch 60 min
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PlenaryIndustry
As central banks, financial institutions, and payment platforms rely heavily on secure communication for transactions, client information, and regulatory compliance, the advent of quantum computing poses a significant threat to some of the classical encryption methods underpinning these systems. Quantum computers, with their potential to solve integer factorization (used in RSA) and discrete logarithm problems (used in ECC) exponentially faster than classical computers, could break widely used cryptographic systems like RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which secure most financial communications today. This quantum threat calls for proactive strategies to ensure the long-term security of financial networks. In this work, we have explored the available solutions, working closely with different encryption technologies and key management systems. The network is based on cloud VPN, providing a high level of cryptoagility, or the ability to switch between cryptographic algorithms efficiently, and shows significant interoperability among providers featuring standard protocols."
Breakout
Self-sovereign identity (SSI) and digital credentials are becoming more and more practical, especially in Europe, and as such it is essential for them to be secured against the quantum threat. As we know PQC is a relatively modern area of cryptography and so we have decided to implement both a classical and a PQC digital signature scheme in a hybrid implementation within an SSI stack. Therefore, providing the classical security we know and trust while also preparing for the eventual quantum computing attack in the future. We are developing a hybrid PQC digital signature scheme in which we are implementing ML-DSA and ECDSA in parallel. The goals of our project also include the benchmarking and comparison of the hybrid vs PQC vs classical implementations.
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Plenary
As we transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), professionals across various sectors, initially in IT, finance, and business, must be retrained to implement the new NIST protocols and prepare for ongoing crypto-agile updates. This shift presents a unique challenge, as much of this retraining will need to occur on the job through workforce development programs rather than in traditional classroom settings.
This talk will focus on identifying effective strategies for developing retraining programs, drawing from past curriculum models in technologies such as High-Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence. We will present examples of PQC retraining programs from the cybersecurity and finance sectors, demonstrating how to integrate open-source tutorials, training platforms, textbooks, and existing industry programs into a cohesive, customized curriculum that aligns with each professional’s responsibilities and already established long-term development goals.
This session will offer practical guidance to managers, team leaders and developers for designing their own PQC workforce development curricula, highlighting useful pedagogical frameworks, current tools, and available platforms.
Breakout
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems promise to be a provably secure key transfer between two peers based on quantum effects that can meet the requirements for a quantum-secure communication in the post-quantum-threat era. For countries as well as for companies worldwide it is essential to keep track with the fast-changing developments on secure communication. The development and application of new cryptographic methods and key exchanges is immanent. We at Bundesdruckerei GmbH, owned by the German Federal Ministry of Finance, had the chance to examine and test several QKD systems and their peripherals within the Qu-Gov project. This talk will show the delimitation of QKD to PQC but also the potential use of a hybrid system and shares our experience with such QKD-systems regarding their performance, use in existing infrastructure, caveats and limits as well as open issues that we see as crucial.
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Plenary
The race towards post-quantum cryptography has started. While several organizations in the finance sector are taking steps to prepare for the transition, the focus seems to still be building up. This session will provide an update on the status of the transition to PQC in the financial sector, including relevant regulations such as DORA, PCI-DSS, CNSA2, and NIST IR 8547, and how these regulations collectively drive the need for improved cryptography management; the ongoing collaboration in initiatives like the Europol Quantum Safe Financial Forum or the FS-ISAC PQC Workgroup; and the Santander Quantum Threat Program.
BreakoutHardware
Every currently deployed HSM must be replaced with a quantum-safe HSM. But what is a quantum-safe HSM. First, it must itself utilize quantum-safe root keys and algorithms for its processing. Second, it must support quantum-safe firmware updates to remain agile and current as algorithms and protocols evolve. Third, it must provide access to PQC algorithms for application integration. These capabilities must be bult-in not bolted-on to an existing HSM. An HSM that exposes PQC algorithms but itself uses classic algorithms is NOT quantum-safe. This talk will explore these issues in detail.
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Plenary
Accelerated computing is revolutionizing numerous fields, including quantum computing (QC) and artificial intelligence (AI), and is also set to accelerate the development of robust post-quantum cryptographic solutions. This talk explores how cutting-edge AI techniques are addressing challenges within QC across the hardware and software stack to create more optimized circuits, bringing practical quantum computers one step closer. Additionally, this talk will cover how GPU-based acceleration serves as a safeguard against emerging quantum cryptographic threats. We will reveal how GPU-based algorithms are accelerating cryptographic research by examining technical challenges in parallelizing cryptographic workloads across GPUs, managing memory bandwidth, optimizing performance, and overcoming hardware limitations. We will also highlight how these technologies are accelerating QC research. Real-world applications in sectors such as finance, healthcare, and data privacy will be showcased, demonstrating the practical benefits of AI, QC, and PQC.
Breakout
With advancements in Quantum Computing, the security of our data relies heavily on robust cryptographic solutions.
Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) with integrated Post-Quantum Cryptographic (PQC) algorithms become center stage for securing data in the Quantum Computing Era. Besides providing PQC algorithms, HSMs also secure and automate key distribution for “complex to manage” stateful hash-based signature algorithms and provide hardware acceleration to meet modern applications’ cryptographic needs.
Taking those advancements as starting point, the talk will shift gear and explore how security systems, comprising of software and hardware, use Post Quantum primitives to secure their operation. Important systems include Key Management, PKI, and File & Folder Encryption. The role of each system in the security framework will be discussed, focusing on specific PQC requirements.
The talk continues to move to the solution level, and will provide insights and lessons learned for the needs and challenges of securing an inter-banking system, a project currently at the research stage.
By the end of the session, attendees will have a good overview on the capabilities of cryptographic components, how those capabilities can be used by security solutions and what is needed next, to secure whole “Ecosystems” against Quantum Computer attacks on today’s cryptography.
Please note that speakers were not permitted to promote products or services during their presentations. While commercials, workshops, and pitches included commercial information, the primary focus of the conference remained on educational content.
This conference was made possible through the support of the Post-Quantum Cryptography Working Group and the following organizations:
For more information about the conference, please contact the PKI Consortium at feedback@pkic.org.
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