Standards

With the July 2022 announcement by NIST of the PQC algorithms selected for standardization, a flurry of activity has begun in other standards bodies such as IETF aiming to update Internet protocol standards to incorporate the new algorithms.  Public Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) like IETF are often volunteer-driven. Successfully updating their standards is a necessary step for full adoption of and migration to PQC, but the pace at which such standards evolve and finalize depends on the degree of committed effort by the community.

Goals

This workstream is focusing on post-quantum cryptography standardization gaps which need to be addressed for a smoother migration. It also is evaluating sovereign post-quantum cryptography requirements to assess misalignments which could pose challenges for vendor compliance and interoperability.

Impact

This work’s impact would be to accelerate the maturation and final adoption of PQC-enabling specifications in various SDOs. It could also enable interoperable compliance by influencing alignment quantum-safe crypto requirements, where possible.