Post-Quantum Cryptography: Start the Inventory Before Q-Day

You don't inventory your house the morning of the move. You start months before. So why are most organizations still treating post-quantum cryptography as a 2035 problem?

Episode 31 of Plaintext with Rich treats the post-quantum crypto migration as what it actually is. A logistics problem, not a science one. We walk through the news peg that moved the timeline. Google's March 2026 announcement of a 2029 internal deadline, years ahead of federal targets, anchored by Craig Gidney's research at Google Quantum AI showing that one million noisy qubits could break a 2,048-bit RSA key in under a week. We explain harvest-now-decrypt-later in plain language, the threat that doesn't wait for Q-Day. We cover the three new NIST standards (FIPS 203, FIPS 204, FIPS 205), the NSA's January 2027 CNSA 2.0 procurement gate, and the design principle that matters more than any single algorithm. Crypto-agility. The episode closes with a Plaintext Starter Kit for the leader who needs to know what to ask the security team this quarter.

If you've ever wondered what "quantum breaks encryption" actually means for your environment, or whether you should be doing anything about it before 2030, this one is for you.

Ten minutes. One topic. No panic.

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Transcript

Moving Day For Encryption

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You know that feeling. The truck pulls up in the driveway at 8 a.m. You haven't packed the kitchen. The garage is still a graveyard of, we'll deal with it later. Boxes. You meant to buy boxes. And now there are two strangers in your driveway with a clipboard waiting on you to figure out what's fragile and what's trash. If you've ever done this, you know the rule. You don't inventory your house the morning of the move. You start months before. You walk every room, you label what stays, what goes, what's worth wrapping in newspapers. Now, some of you, I know, still pack the night before. I'm not judging we've all been there. But you really do not want quantum-resistant cryptography to be the move you pack the night before. Welcome to Plain Text with Rich. Today we are talking about post-quantum cryptography, the migration timeline, and what a non-technical leader should be asking their security team this quarter, maybe next quarter, right? This is not a science episode. We are not going to explain qubits. This is more of a logistics episode. So as always, let's start in plain

Q Day And What Breaks

SPEAKER_00 1:20

text. The plain text version here is quantum computers, when they get powerful enough, can break the kind of encryption that protects, well, most of the internet today. Online banking, email, VPNs, the little lock icon in your browser, for those who still have it, right? Not all encryption, specifically the math that secures key exchange and digital signatures, RSA, elliptic curve, Diffie-Hellman. That math is built on problems classical computers can't solve fast enough to matter. A quantum computer running an algorithm, say called Shore's algorithm, can solve them. Once that machine exists at scale, the locks come off. That moment has been given a name, and most people call it Q Day. Now, here's the part that matters for us. You do not have to wait until Q day for it to affect

Harvest Now Decrypt Later

SPEAKER_00 2:18

you. The threat actually lives right now, and it's a threat we've seen called harvesting. Harvest now, decrypt later. Now, the plain text version of that is an adversary doesn't need a quantum computer today. They just need a hard drive, right? They are collecting encrypted traffic right now and they're sitting on it and they're waiting. When the quantum computer arrives, they decrypt the archive. Your encrypted backups from 2024, right? The legal correspondence, the trade secrets, the intellectual property worth 10 years of RD, right? Anything that needs to stay confidential into the 2030s is at risk today. Again, not because the encryption broke, because someone copied it while it was still locked.

The New Deadlines 2027 And 2029

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Now let's talk about that timeline because this is what has shifted. The broad federal target for transitioning national security systems to quantum resistant cryptography is 2035. But there's a much closer fence post, and that fence post is January 1st, 2027. That's when the NSA's Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 or CNSA 2.0 kicks in. From that date, all new acquisitions of national security systems must support quantum resistant algorithms by default. And that deadline is less than a year away. Then in March of this year, Google published its own migration plan. Their internal deadline is 2029. Even that is years ahead of the federal target. So why does this matter? Because Google's own research is what moved the goalposts. In 2024, one of their cryptographers, Craig Gidney, published findings showing a quantum machine with around 1 million noisy qubits could break a 2048-bit RSA key in under a week. The previous estimate was 20 million qubits, a 20-fold reduction in what the machine needs to do the job. When the company building the quantum computer says they want their own systems migrated by 2029, that is a signal worth reading. That's the news peg. Now let's talk about what's actually replacing the old math.

NIST Standards You Can Use

SPEAKER_00 4:45

In August of 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, released the first three post-quantum cryptography standards, the new federal standards for encryption designed to survive a quantum computer. And there are three. FIPS 203 is the standard for key exchange. It uses an algorithm called ML Chem or KEM. This is the one that replaces what RSA and Diffie-Hellman do today. FIPS 204 is the standard for digital signatures based on MLDSA. This is what replaces RSA and ECC for verifying that a message or a software update is what it claims to be. And FIPS 205 is a second digital signature standard based on SLH DSA. It uses a different mathematical approach as a backup in case the lattice math behind 203 and 204 ever turns out to have a problem. Now you don't need to remember those names. You need to remember that the standards exist. They are final and they are usable today. There is no we're still waiting on a standard excuse anymore.

Crypto Agility As The Real Goal

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Which brings us to the most important concept in this episode, and that is going to be crypto agility. I will say this is the part I think a lot of organizations are maybe struggling with. Crypto agility is not a one-time migration, it's a design principle. It means your systems are built so that the swapping out, or so that swapping out a cryptographic algorithm is a configuration change and not a rewrite. Because here's the thing ML Kim and MLDSA are excellent. They may also not be the last word. If a weakness is found in one of those new standards in 2030, you do not want to rebuild your entire stack again. You want to swap an algorithm the way you swap a battery. That's the design lesson from this entire transition. Not go install MLCM. It's build so the next swap is cheap. Now,

Five Questions To Ask This Quarter

SPEAKER_00 6:46

our starter kit, as always. This isn't a how-to for cryptographers. This is more so for the leader sitting across the table from the security team. First things first, ask for a cryptographic inventory. Like most things, you cannot migrate what you cannot see. Ask your team where things like RSA, ECC, and Diffie Holman are used in your environment. Vendors, internal apps, backups, VPNs, code signing, hardware. If they can't answer it in 90 days, that's the project. Second, identify your long confidentiality, confidentiality data. What needs to stay secret past 2030? Customer records, MA documents, source code, health data. That's the most exposed to harvest now decrypt later, and we want to prioritize that. Third, ask vendors for their P PLP, their PQC roadmap. Every meaningful vendor should be able to tell you which of their products support FIPS 203 and 204 and when. If they shrug, ah, that is the answer and you need to document it. Fourth, pilot something, hybrid configurations where a system runs a classical and a post-quantum algorithm together, right? These are already supported in modern browsers as well as cloud services. Pick one workload, try it, build that muscle memory now. And the fifth, make crypto agility a design requirement. For any new system or contract, require that cryptographic algorithms can be swapped without a rewrite. Again, that single line of procurement document changes the next decade of your environment. And that's all that I'll leave you with. That's it, those five steps.

Recap And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Now, our recap from this episode: Quantum computers will eventually break the encryption most of the internet runs on. The threat is not future only. HarvestNow decrypt later is live and thriving today. NIST has finalized three post-quantum standard FIPS 203, 204, and 205. The NSA's C NSA 2.0 sets January 2027 as their procurement gate for federal systems. Google moved its own deadline to 2029, which should tell you something. Crypto agility is the goal. The migration is the start, not our finish. And this is a logistics problem. So start that inventory now. As always, if you have a topic you want broken down in plain text, please send it my way. Email me, DM me, or drop it in the comments. And while you're there, DM me your worst legacy crypto story. The older, the better. The triple Dez still in production. The expired cert nobody touches, the hash function that should have been retired during the second Bush administration. I read them all and I will get back to you. If you're listening in a browser, as always, thank you so much. If you're listening in an app, please hit that subscribe and or follow button. It is the single best way to make sure you don't miss the next episode. If this episode helped or you find it enjoyable, please share it with someone else who would benefit and also find it enjoyable. This has been Plain Text with Rich, 10 minutes or less, one topic, no panic. I will see you next time.