Getting ahead of ‘harvest-now-decrypt-later’: Post-quantum cryptography planning
Opinion piece urges organizations to begin post-quantum cryptography migration now, citing harvest-now-decrypt-later risk and NIST deadlines.
CSO Online outlines why harvest-now-decrypt-later makes long-lived sensitive data a current risk even before quantum computers exist. It cites NIST IR 8547 timelines deprecating RSA-2048 and ECC P-256 by 2030 and removing them by 2035, finalized FIPS standards ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA, upcoming FN-DSA (FIPS 206), NSA requirements for national security systems from 2027, and UK NCSC phased guidance through 2035. The author recommends cryptographic discovery, crypto-agility, and prioritizing long-confidentiality data and TLS endpoints.
Post-quantum cryptography adoption and the national security implications
Opinion analysis argues quantum computing favors nation-state espionage, leaving lagging post-quantum adoption at critical infrastructure exposed to harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks.
A CSO Online opinion piece argues that the extreme cost and infrastructure requirements of quantum computers will concentrate cryptographically relevant quantum capability among nation-states and a few corporations, favoring espionage and economic espionage over criminal monetization. It highlights harvest-now-decrypt-later risk to long-lived secrets, expert warnings such as Filippo Valsorda's, and diverging CRQC timelines with Google suggesting possibly 2029. The piece predicts governments, banks, and targeted sectors will adopt PQC first while utilities, small hospitals, and local government lag, widening exploitable gaps in critical infrastructure reminiscent of Salt Typhoon-style access.
Entrust turns cryptographic inventory data into security action
Entrust adds CBOM import/export, Ansible automation, and post-quantum readiness features to its Cryptographic Security Platform.
Entrust announced new capabilities for its Cryptographic Security Platform, including CBOM import/export to build cryptographic inventories, correlate assets and dependencies, and prioritize remediation of noncompliant or vulnerable crypto. New Ansible-based automation extends certificate lifecycle management across public and private PKI, while composite algorithm and SPIRE-based capabilities support phased post-quantum migration and trusted identities for AI agents. The platform is now deployable as-a-service or on-premises, aligning with DORA, NIS2, and recent U.S. post-quantum requirements.
G7 urges organizations to prepare for quantum cyber threats
G7 Cyber Security Working Group and CISA jointly urge organizations to begin migrating to post-quantum cryptography now, citing harvest-now-decrypt-later risk.
In a joint advisory, the G7 Cyber Security Working Group and CISA recommend starting post-quantum cryptography migration immediately rather than waiting for quantum computers to break current encryption. They warn attackers can already harvest encrypted data for later decryption, threatening long-lived secrets such as government records and trade secrets. Organizations are told to inventory sensitive systems, prioritize them, and fold quantum-resistant upgrades into routine refresh cycles. The advisory follows a UK 2035 PQC roadmap and recent US executive orders on quantum preparedness.
G7 Urges Fast-Track on Quantum-Safe Cybersecurity Rules
G7 cybersecurity agencies led by France's ANSSI urged accelerated transition to post-quantum cryptography, prioritizing critical systems and phased, risk-based migration.
Under France's 2026 G7 Presidency, ANSSI, chairing the G7 Cybersecurity Working Group, published a September 3 call to action urging governments and organizations to begin quantum-safe (PQC) transitions now, reframing the quantum threat as near-term. The document, signed by the national cyber agencies of all G7 members and supported by the EU Commission and ENISA, outlines five priorities including national PQC strategies, R&D, public-private partnerships, and integrating PQC into cybersecurity requirements. It recommends cryptographic inventories, dependency mapping, prioritizing the most critical systems, and buying PQC-integrated products during normal renewal cycles. ANSSI will stop vetting non-quantum-safe products in 2027, with PQC mandatory in some security product procurement by 2030.
Bipartisan Senate bill aims to prepare energy sector for Q
Bipartisan Senate bill would direct FERC to factor quantum computing threats and post-quantum cryptography into US electric grid cybersecurity reliability standards.
The Quantum Grid Utility Assurance and Resilient Defense (Quantum-GUARD) Act, introduced by Senators Mike Rounds and Chris Coons, would require FERC to consider quantum computing threats when reviewing electric reliability standards and to explore post-quantum cryptography use in both IT and OT systems, plus a technical sandbox to study quantum impacts. It aligns with NIST's post-quantum algorithm work, and a June executive order moved the federal PQC migration deadline from 2035 to 2030. Industry experts noted the hard part is upgrading infrastructure such as SCADA communications and software update integrity ahead of those deadlines.
Why Johnny Can't Encrypt: A Usability Evaluation of PGP 5.0 (1999)
Seminal 1999 USENIX study finds most novice users cannot correctly sign and encrypt email with PGP 5.0 in 90 minutes.
Whitten and Tygar's USENIX Security Symposium paper evaluates whether cryptography novices can use PGP 5.0 effectively, using cognitive walkthrough analysis and a laboratory user test. The majority of test participants failed to successfully sign and encrypt a message within 90 minutes, despite PGP 5.0 having a well-regarded graphical interface. The authors argue that security requires usability standards beyond those of general consumer software and propose domain-specific UI design principles for security. The paper is a foundational reference in usable security research.
NIST and CISA finalize playbook to stop token theft and forgery
NIST and CISA finalized NIST IR 8587, a playbook helping federal agencies and cloud providers defend identity tokens against theft and forgery.
The finalized NIST IR 8587 guidance covers protecting token signing keys, verifying tokens, lifetimes, revocation, session management, and dividing security responsibilities between cloud providers and customers. It cites an incident in which foreign actors forged tokens with a stolen commercial signing key to steal more than 60,000 emails from one government agency. It also recommends extending token protections to AI agents and preparing identity systems for a future post-quantum cryptography transition.
EFI Pairs Without One-Way Puzzles: Oracle Separations from Communication Complexity
Theorists build a classical oracle where one-way puzzles fail yet EFI pairs survive, separating two candidate minimal assumptions of quantum cryptography.
The paper constructs a single classical oracle relative to which one-way puzzles do not exist, even with an unbounded verifier, while an EFI pair survives every classical-query distinguisher holding advice, making one superposition query at the end. Security is proven by reducing adversary knowledge to communication complexity for Vector-in-Subspace, with the superposition query bounded using random matrix theory. Relative to the oracle, quantum polynomial time offers no advantage on tasks with classical inputs and outputs and there is no proof of quantumness, separating the leading minimal assumptions of quantum cryptography.
The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption
A G7 working group report urges governments and industry to accelerate post-quantum cryptography migration, framing quantum risk as a near-term economic threat.
A cybersecurity working group formed at the June 2026 G7 Summit in France called on organizations to stop postponing migration of critical systems to post-quantum cryptography, warning that harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks against currently encrypted data exist today. The report was signed by CISA, the UK NCSC, France's ANSSI, Germany's BSI, Canada's CSE, Japan's NCO, and Italy's ACN. It also cautions that some NIST-selected PQC algorithms have already been broken on classical computers, reinforcing support for crypto-agility. The push aligns with a recent US executive order moving federal PQC migration timelines from 2035 to 2030, while Google and others target 2029.
Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era: A Call to Action
CISA and the G7 Cyber Security Working Group urge organizations to begin post-quantum cryptography migration, outlining five transition priorities.
CISA and the G7 Cyber Security Working Group jointly released "Preparing for the Post-Quantum Era: A Call to Action". The document urges governments and organizations to begin migrating sensitive data, authentication systems, and critical assets to post-quantum cryptography against emerging quantum computing threats. It defines five priorities: raising quantum-risk awareness, national PQC strategies, quantum-safe R&D, public-private partnerships, and integrating PQC into cybersecurity requirements and procurement.
Nearly half of enterprises have no one leading PQC migration
Axiad survey finds 46% of enterprises lack a single leader for post-quantum cryptography migration despite most maintaining cryptographic inventories.
Axiad research on post-quantum cryptography (PQC) readiness found 75% of respondents maintain continuously updated inventories of certificates, keys, and algorithms, but 46% have no single person owning the migration. About half have never formally assessed whether public-facing infrastructure supports post-quantum key exchange. 67% said the harvest-now-decrypt-later threat is an active priority, with competing priorities, budget constraints, and lack of regulatory guidance cited as top obstacles; executives were more confident than PKI practitioners.
Google Cloud Targets 2027 for First Major Post-Quantum Security Milestone
Google Cloud set 2027 for its first major post-quantum cryptography milestone to counter store-now-decrypt-later risks, migrating through 2028.
Google Cloud announced a post-quantum cryptography roadmap targeting its first major security milestone in 2027. The plan aims to mitigate store-now-decrypt-later harvest risks, with wider migration goals extending through 2028. The roadmap affects cryptographic protections for Google Cloud services and customer migration planning timelines.
Ubiq Security unveils API-based encryption platform for developers, reducing encryption complexities
1.1.1.1 now supports post-quantum DNSSEC, all 2,420 bytes of it
Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 resolver now validates post-quantum DNSSEC signatures using ML-DSA-44, a 2,420-byte NIST algorithm, preparing DNS for post-quantum migration by 2029.
Cloudflare enabled 1.1.1.1 to validate DNSSEC signatures using ML-DSA-44 (algorithm 18), a NIST-standardized post-quantum signature with 1,312-byte public keys and 2,420-byte signatures, roughly 38x larger than ECDSA P-256. The large signatures exceed common DNS-over-UDP limits, forcing fallback to TCP and creating downgrade risks while conventional algorithms must be published alongside. Cloudflare cites the risk of a quantum computer breaking RSA/ECDSA signatures by 2030 and plans full post-quantum security by 2029.
Cybersecurity jobs available right now: September 1, 2026
Help Net Security's September 1, 2026 roundup lists cybersecurity job openings at Google, Barclays, HUMAN and others across the US, Europe and Asia.
The weekly jobs roundup lists openings including a Google Security Engineer (Professional Services) role in the USA, a Cryptography Operations Engineer at Barclays in the UK, a Backend Engineer at HUMAN in Israel, and an AI Security Engineer at CPX in the UAE. Other listed roles span SOC analysis, SIEM engineering, cloud security, and network security across the USA, Ireland, India, Italy and Australia.
Automatic Key Exchange: faster, post-quantum secure origin handshakes for 45 billion daily connections (and counting)
Cloudflare's Automatic Key Exchange probes origins to lead with preferred key exchange, cutting HelloRetryRequests from 52% to 3.7% and enabling automatic post-quantum origin connections.
Cloudflare announced Automatic Key Exchange, an extension of Automatic SSL/TLS that probes each origin's supported key agreement algorithms and leads with the preferred one, favoring the post-quantum hybrid X25519MLKEM768. Rollover across roughly 45 billion daily origin connections cut HelloRetryRequests from about 52% to 3.7%, saving more than 150 ms of p90 handshake latency. Hundreds of thousands of domains now receive post-quantum origin connections without manual configuration, supporting Cloudflare's goal of quantum-safe encryption by 2029 to counter harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks.
I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s
Security researcher factored two 512-bit RSA root CA keys from defunct 1990s certificate authority E-Certify using CADO-NFS on a desktop in roughly 30 hours each.
A researcher extracted legacy root certificates from archived Netscape and Internet Explorer installers, identifying two 512-bit RSA roots shipped with Netscape 4.51 in 1999 by the defunct Canadian CA E-Certify. Using CADO-NFS on a Ryzen 9 5950X desktop, the keys were factored in 32 and 29 hours respectively, allowing private key reconstruction. The work comes shortly after RSA-260 (862-bit) was factored, the largest known factorization to date. The researcher also built a legacy TLS server and published keys and tools on GitHub.
New CISO appointments 2026
Companies including Mistral AI, Trellix, Marriott, and ANZ appointed new CISOs in July-September 2026 amid high security-leadership turnover.
CSO Online's rolling column tracks senior security appointments, noting many companies are hiring a CSO/CISO for the first time. Notable moves include Thomas Coudray leaving Ledger to become Mistral AI's CISO, David Soto joining Trellix from Amazon, and Daniel Dubowski becoming Marriott International's SVP and CISO. Other appointments span ANZ, Gigamon, Axonius, Tricentis, Remitly, Allied Universal, and the State of California.
Cybersecurity jobs available right now: June 24, 2026
Help Net Security lists open cybersecurity roles at DriveNets, Thales, University of Chicago, Bayer, Novartis, NATO NCIA and other employers.
This is a recurring roundup of open cybersecurity job postings across multiple countries, including application security, cloud security architecture, red teaming, PKI and cryptography, and AI compliance governance roles. Listings span Israel, Canada, the USA, India, Ireland, the UK, Belgium and Australia. All positions shown are marked as no longer accepting applications.
Future-Proofing the Internet: Akamai Achieves End-to-End PQC
Akamai says it achieved end-to-end post-quantum cryptography across its network to future-proof internet traffic.
Akamai announced it has achieved end-to-end post-quantum cryptography (PQC) across its services. The company frames the move as future-proofing the internet against quantum decryption threats. No article text was available; details are limited to the announcement title.
Google’s open-source HEIR lets AI work with data it can’t see
Google open-sourced HEIR, a compiler toolchain that converts pre-trained AI models to operate on homomorphically encrypted data without exposing it.
Google's HEIR (Homomorphic Encryption Intermediate Representation) is an open-source compiler toolchain and development platform for fully homomorphic encryption, announced in 2023 and now supporting four peer-reviewed publications. It compiles Python programs handling sensitive data into implementations that process encrypted inputs, supporting multiple FHE schemes, libraries, front-end languages, and hardware accelerators such as GPUs, TPUs, FPGAs, and custom ASICs. Demonstrated applications include private recommendations, credit card fraud detection, network intrusion detection, and hotword recognition.