The White House is dramatically shortening the timeline for government agencies and organizations to adopt new quantum-resistant encryption systems that will resist attacks using quantum computers, as the federal government seeks to protect decades of secrets belonging to militaries, banks, governments and most individuals on Earth.
The executive order, titled Protect the nation against advanced crypto attacksRequires computing systems for “high-value assets” and “high-impact systems” to transition to post-quantum cryptographic keying schemes by December 31, 2030, and to quantum-secure digital signature schemes by December 31, 2031.
Avoid a significant threat
The new deadline, which for many organizations is about five years earlier than the previous one, comes on the heels of recent research showing that the resources and cost to build a cryptographically relevant quantum computer are much lower than previous consensus estimates. In response, Google, Cloudflare and other companies recently They tightened their schedules to abandon vulnerable systems until 2029.
“The arrival of large-scale quantum computers, particularly in the hands of adversaries, will pose a significant threat to widely used cryptographic security systems,” Monday’s executive order states. “Ongoing cyber activity against our nation also presents the risk that adversaries will collect US information now and decrypt it later, once large-scale quantum computers are operational.”
under a timeline As published by the National Security Agency in 2022, “National Security Systems,” a class that includes only defense and intelligence systems under the authority of the agency, were ordered to be ready for quantum technology between 2030 and 2033. Most other organizations had until 2035 to complete the transition. Now, many of them will have to make the transition much sooner.
“So for any systems that fall into this new group of high-value assets and high-impact systems, their transition timelines have been shortened by 4 to 5 years (from 2035 to 2030/2031),” Brian LaMacchia, a cryptography engineer who oversaw Microsoft’s post-quantum transition from 2015 to 2022 and now works at Farcaster Consulting Group, told Ars. “That’s a significant reduction in the transition timeline for these systems, and follows revisions to similar timelines from Google and Cloudflare that we saw announced in late March or early April.”
