CISOs Urged To Prepare Now For Post-Quantum Cryptography
CSO Online, Monday, August 19th, 2024
Three NIST-approved encryption algorithms set the stage for establishing PQC strategies, which - despite quantum computing's infancy - CISOs should begin launching given the attack techniques and challenges involved.
After eight years of review and development, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has chosen three encryption algorithms as the basis for its post-quantum cryptography (PQC).
The three new algorithms collectively cover general encryption - used to protect information exchanged across a public network - and digital signatures. For general encryption, NIST has approved ML-KEM, formerly known as CRYSTALS-Kyber and short for Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism. ML-DSA (Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) and SLH-DSA (Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) have been given to go-ahead as standard for digital signatures. ML-DSA and SL-DSA were previously known as CRYSTALS-Dilithium and Sphincs+, respectively.