Being Crypto Agile in A Quantum World

Over the past 25 years, cryptographic algorithms have undergone a few upgrades and experienced some vulnerabilities. We are currently entering the Y2Q era where legacy crypto has become obsolete. During the Covid-19 pandemic, cyber crimes reportedly quadrupled. Since we are already in the quantum era, it’s time we realise the need to be ready for a post-quantum world.

Today, most cyber threats and attacks go undetected. Quantum cryptography is a boon in this case as it allows firms to understand and detect threats such as MITM attacks, DDoS Attacks, Trojan attacks, and security spoofing.

What does cryptoagility mean in Y2Q?

Cryptoagility is a practice in designing the information systems which encourages support of new crypto primitives and crypto algorithms without making significant changes to system infrastructure. A plan is considered to be cryptoagile if the existing cryptographic algorithms and other parameters can be changed with ease without leaving gaps in implementation.

Are today's crypto algorithms safe?

Today’s cryptosystems are based on mathematical complexities like RSA, DSA, Diffie-Hellman, ECC (Elliptical Curve Cryptography) and other variants of ciphers.

Currently, all the public key cryptography in security products and protocols use ciphers. Hackers are already harvesting data which is encrypted without keys and are now going after information locked with keys. In the near future, they can decrypt private keys with a quantum computer by using Shor’s algorithm. Since high computation power is adding concern to today’s PKI, any crypto with mathematical complexities is a risk in the present Y2Q.

How can you be cryptoagile?

Crypto algorithms don’t require quantum computing to be broken. Most break over time since cryptography is a evolutionary process and algorithms become obsolete after sometime.

Practice cryptoagilty in your organisation Cryptoagility is the process where organisations have the ability to react to threats by implementing alternative methods of encryption. Organisations should have:

The ability to respond to threats by being cryptoagile

Updated device roots, Keys and Certificates

Quick and easy migration from PKI to post quantum-resistant algorithms become obsolete after sometime.

Stay secure with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) Start protecting your mission-critical connected devices using secure key management which consists of quantum keys. QKDs use photons to send encrypted keys which are theoretically unbreakable. The super advantage of QKD is when an eavesdropper tries to read or intercept the data, the QKD system sends an alarm and the connection and keys is destroyed.

Secure applications with Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) Generating a high quality of random numbers means that your organisation is secure. A QRNG helps in generating truly random numbers naturally by using laws of quantum physics. Thus, it produces a high entropy for critical applications where the high-quality random number is much vital like data center, cloud, gaming and lottery applications, blockchain network, etc. The biggest advantage is that it can detect any attack on entropy sources.

Advantages of implementing Quantum Cryptography

Forward security or secrecy is the ‘Need of the Hour’ for companies today. Forward secrecy protects past sessions against future compromises of keys or passwords.

Avoid SSL Attacks

Organisations can discover potential back-door vulnerabilities

Keys and data do not travel together, as a result there is no risk of ‘Harvest now, Decrypt later’

No need to replace current cryptosystem; just add a quantum layer