Get Ready for Y2Q

Dateline: Woking, 2nd July 2024.Remember when the Russians published the contents of top secret Germany army discussions about missile deployments? According to Der Spiegel magazine, the discussions did not take place on a secure army network but on WebEx. Perhaps it’s time to start taking security seriously, as Apple has done.SharePost-Quantum SecurityApple are introducing new security to their iMessage service in the form of the PQ3 protocol, an end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol designed for exchanging data in long-lived sessions between two devices (eg, chats with your friends). Why is this interesting? Well, it’s because it uses “Kyber”, an algorithm selected by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST ) as one of its post-quantum security standards.Post-quantum security means security that employs cryptographic principles and practices designed to secure communications and data against the potential future threat posed by quantum computers. Traditional cryptographic systems use classes of algorithms, including the algorithms used to secure today’s internet communications of all kinds (including banking, shopping and messaging), based on mathematical problems that are difficult to solve with classical computers but could be easily solved with quantum computers.Quantum computers operate on the principles of quantum mechanics, allowing them to process information in ways fundamentally different from classical computers. While large-scale quantum computers capable of breaking these current cryptographic systems are not yet a reality, the potential for their development poses a significant threat to contemporary security measures.With this threat in mind, organisations are beginning to think about switching to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). There are…Get Ready for Y2Q