The National Institute of Standards and Technology is soliciting public comments on the first draft of its report describing how the agency will manage and guide the transition to cryptography standards less vulnerable to attacks from a quantum computer.
The 22-page draft report, titled “Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards,” pinpoints the current quantum-vulnerable cryptographic standards and existing quantum-resistant algorithms proposed for deployment in the migration, NIST said Tuesday.
The report is designed to serve as a roadmap for federal agencies, industry and standards organizations for migrating IT products, services and networks to post-quantum cryptography, or PQC.
Digital Signature Candidates
Among the steps that it provides are migration considerations as to use cases in code signing and user and machine authentication, as well as PQC hybrid digital signature techniques. In October, NIST announced 14 candidates to advance the second round of additional digital signatures for the PQC standardization process.
NIST will use the comments on its report draft to revise its PQC transition plan and other similar algorithm- and application-specific migration roadmaps. The deadline for comment submission, sent through the pqc-transition@nist.gov e-mail, is on Jan. 10, 2025.
