Episode 9.1 - Getting serious about PQC

Crucial Tech

About twice a year, the post-quantum computing (PQC) niche of the cybersecurity industry pushes out truckloads of press releases and articles about the coming quantum computing apocalypse. In all of this content there is little explanation regarding what this means for most people.

It seems like everyone should be concerned, based on the level of urgency the companies present, but in the end, no one has yet built a quantum computer capable of breaking even the most standard 256-bit encryption. To that statement the industry responds with, “Yet.”

This year, however, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued the first, approved algorithm standards to produce encryptions capable of fighting off quantum computing attacks. So we thought it would be a good idea to put together a batch of experts to explain why the rest of us should care.

The invitation was put out to a dozen experts in the PQC industry, but also to the companies tasked with implementing their products into the internet. Unfortunately, none of the PQC companies ended up accepting the invitation when they learned they would on the same platform discussing their approaches. But we did get acceptances from representatives from the other group. Our final panel was comprised of Karl Holqvist, CEO of of LastWall; Tim Hollebeek, industry strategist for Digicert: and Murali Palanisamy, CEO of AppviewX.