IQT Fall New York 2022 was the first international conference and exhibition focused on quantum cybersecurity, providing attendees with a deep understanding of the current impact of quantum technology – and how it will evolve.
While members of Team PQShield were on hand to answer questions and discuss all things post-quantum at our dedicated booth, Ben Packman, SVP Strategy, shared his thoughts as part of a panel on PQC products.
Conversation quickly turned to early adopters and their motivations, with Ben highlighting the uptake in both semiconductors and defense businesses – such as with customers Microchip and Collins – driven by new secure product development rather than legacy platform migration.
Use cases such as secure boot and secure update are common, followed by secure comms and customer-specific applications – e.g. highly secure coordination between multiple, actively deployed systems in a defense scenario. What differentiates all these customers is that their current product development streams have both high security needs and long lifecycles in the field. It’s therefore crucial that they maintain control for many years to come.
The topic of timelines is something we at PQShield discuss with customers on a daily basis. This is unsurprising, given that there’s a lot of post-quantum noise out there and a lot of overlap between the claims that many prospective customers hear. Businesses don’t know how much they need to do themselves and how much they can rely on their supply chain.
To ensure widespread and steady state rollout of PQC, the industry needs to pull together here and help make it clear. Systems integrators need to upskill to help architect and deploy these change programmes, while OEMS and product businesses – for example, network infrastructure companies – need to produce clear product roadmaps well in advance, to help inform the CISO further up the chain as to how it fits their strategy.
Ultimately, the key message that came out of our participation in IQT was that the evolving nature of technology in this field means we need to deploy security in an agile way, across the entire supply chain. Yes, it’s crucial to prepare for the imminent quantum threat, but we also have a responsibility to look towards our future digital infrastructure and address not only issues, but opportunities.
PQC is maturing but it has a way to go yet, the wider commercial world has still got to be educated, and if we adopt a flexible approach there’s a real chance we can keep everyone’s data secure in the future – without the same scale of migration that we face now.