BREAKING NEWS: NIST Finalizes Three Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards

August 14, 2024

This clears the way for broad deployment of post-quantum cryptography to begin in earnest. 

The National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced the final approval of the first three full federal standards for post-quantum cryptographic algorithms.  The three standards are:

* FIPS 203, Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism Standard (ML-KEM)

* FIPS 204, Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard (ML-DSA)

* FIPS 205, Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Standard (SLH-DSA)

The announcement comes nearly 8 years after the kickoff of NIST’s Post-Quantum Cryptography Project, which aimed to build public consensus in the cryptographic research community on new asymmetric cryptographic algorithms to guard against potential attack by an adversary equipped with advanced quantum computing capabilities. 

This represents a significant moment in the process of migration to post-quantum cryptography, as the specific algorithms are now settled.  This clears the way for broad deployment of post-quantum cryptography to begin in earnest.