Stop Hiring PQC Experts !!!

It is time organisations stopped making the mistake of assuming they need to hire a PQC expert. The real challenge has nothing to do with solving cryptography or researching new algorithms. PQC is not a cryptographic research problem anymore. It is a PKI, enterprise and operations problem.

Let's be blunt: hiring PQC experts without fixing PKI operations is like hiring quantum physicists to fix a broken plumbing system. The mathematics is not the problem, the infrastructure is. Most organisations still struggle with the basics: expired certificates, unknown trust relationships, weak crypto visibility, manual certificate processes and poor lifecycle governance.

This session challenges the growing narrative that organisations need dedicated PQC specialists before they can begin preparing for the quantum era. Instead, it argues that PQC migration is fundamentally a PKI operational challenge. Replacing cryptographic algorithms is only one part of the problem; the real challenge is operationalising cryptography at enterprise scale across complex environments, legacy systems, hybrid infrastructures, certificate lifecycles, trust chains and governance models.

This is where the real insight emerges. The people who can actually solve this are not those who understand the deepest mathematics of PQC, but those who understand how trust is built, managed, and sustained across an enterprise. PKI experts (the teams already responsible for certificates, key lifecycles, and trust infrastructure) are the ones who must be empowered.

PQC is not about inventing cryptography anymore. It is about surviving its transformation. The organisations that succeed in the PQC transition will not be the ones with the most theoretical quantum knowledge. They will be the ones with mature PKI foundations, automated certificate management, strong governance and operational discipline. Provocative by design, this talk reframes PQC migration from a research problem into a real-world enterprise execution challenge, and explains why fixing PKI maturity today is the most important step toward becoming quantum ready tomorrow.