Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) provide digital public services and communication by securing information-sharing and strong credentials for digital identity management to individuals, businesses, and government agencies. While cryptographic algorithms that current PKI systems depend on are mostly resilient against hacks and other threats launched from computers we use today, the advancement of quantum computing technology introduces new security threats. This calls for current PKI systems to be modified with quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms. However, transitioning to Quantum-safe (QS) PKI systems remains complex, and the challenges are socio-technical. The research aims to guide organizations transitioning towards QS PKI systems. In doing so, we will deconstruct the QS transition into a series of stages and paths using growth models and examine how organizations can transit over time towards QS PKI systems.
Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) provide digital public services and communication by securing information-sharing and strong credentials for digital identity management to individuals, businesses, and government agencies. While cryptographic algorithms that current PKI systems depend on are mostly resilient against hacks and other threats launched from computers we use today, the advancement of quantum computing technology introduces new security threats. This calls for current PKI systems to be modified with quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms. However, transitioning to Quantum-safe (QS) PKI systems remains complex, and the challenges are socio-technical. The research aims to guide organizations transitioning towards QS PKI systems. In doing so, we will deconstruct the QS transition into a series of stages and paths using growth models and examine how organizations can transit over time towards QS PKI systems.
The computation power of quantum computers introduces new security threats in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), a system used by many governments to secure their digital public services and communication. This calls for an inevitable need for governments to be quantum-safe (QS) by modifying their PKI systems to be resistant to the attacks of quantum computers. However, there is limited academic literature on a QS PKI system, and in this limited literature, the transition challenges are perceived as exclusively technological. This paper aims to create a structured overview of challenges when transitioning to a QS PKI system. We do this by reviewing literature and classifying the challenges using Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and using an expert workshop to explore the challenges in the context of the PKI system in the Dutch government. The main challenges in the technological context include no universal QS solution, legacy system, complex PKI interoperability, and vulnerable Root CA. The main challenges in the organizational context include knowledge gap, unclear governance, lack of urgency, and in-house management support. Furthermore, the main challenges in the environmental context include institutional void, stakeholder collaboration, lack of awareness, and policy guidance. The results indicate that the QS transition from the current PKI system is complex, and the challenges are socio-technical. For policy-makers, this implies that they should start early to prepare, whereas organizations are hardly aware of the process of QS transition and the topic of quantum computing is yet to develop the urgency in organizations.
Ensuring the secure provision of data and services using critical information infrastructures amidst the evolving technology landscape is a crucial yet recurrent task. However, these infrastructures can become vulnerable due to developments in quantum computing and modifying the infrastructures with quantum-safe (QS) technology is unlike regular control and maintenance. Organizations need to modify their cryptographic layers, which act as the fundamental building blocks of infrastructures. For organizations, many uncertainties pose challenges across technological, organizational and ecosystem areas. While QS technology is new and not yet available for implementation and adoption, changes in critical information infrastructures require collaboration among multiple public and private organizations spanning industries and borders. By understanding the roles, organizations may better understand what should be done for QS transitions. Until now, there has been no academic research examining the roles that government could or should play in QS transitions. This paper reveals 12 different roles, showing the diversity and breadth of actions needed. While there are many possible roles that still need to be allocated for coordinated efforts, there is a high reliance on the government, and organizations are waiting for and expecting governments to take more active roles in QS transitions. The results also signals that QS transition research is at its early stage with a clear governance void and lack of collective urgency in the ecosystem.
Development of Quantum Computers are growing rapidly, the security of today’s cryptographic systems which are working with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is at serious risk. RSA and ECC algorithms are the backbone of secure communication and digital identity can be breakable by quantum algorithms such as Shor’s. Hence, a transition is required to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), which is designed to handle quantum attacks. This work provides a detailed review of how PQC can be integrated with the existing PKI, with a special focus on the auto-enrollment process. Auto-enrollment is an essential process but often overlooked mechanism, responsible for automatically issuing and renewing digital certificates. First, we explored how current PKI systems are exposed to the quantum threats and the readiness. The performance of the algorithms that are standardized by NIST, such as Kyber and Dilithium were discussed. We analyze the technical and operational challenges of transitioning to PQC by referencing both research studies and real-world implementations from major industry players such as Google and Microsoft. These include large key size, certificate size, compatibility issues, complex computations and need for crypto-agility. We also examine the hybrid approaches that combine classical and post-quantum methods as traditional strategies. The survey concludes by outlining best practices, deployment considerations, and open research challenges that must be addressed for a smooth, secure, and scalable shift to quantum-safe PKI. This work aims to guide researchers, engineers, and policymakers in building the next generation of cryptographic infrastructure that can stand the test-time even in a quantum world.
By utilizing the properties of quantum mechanics, quantum computers have the potential to factor a key pair of a large prime number and break some of the core cryptographic primitives that most information infrastructures depend on. This means that today's widely used cryptographic algorithms can soon become unsafe and need to be modified with quantum-safe (QS) cryptography. While much work is still needed in developing QS cryptographic algorithms, the institutional, organizational, and policy aspects of transitioning the current infrastructures have received less attention. This paper provides an empirical analysis of QS transition challenges and policy recommendations for moving to a QS situation. We analyzed the data collected through interviews with experts and practitioners from the Dutch government. The results reveal that institutional, organizational and policy aspects of QS transitions are interconnected, and solutions for QS transitions are scattered. Consequently, organizations may face a Catch-22 loop without further actionable approaches and planning for QS transitions.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) continues to play a crucial role in securing government networks and providing cryptographic assurance of a person or device’s identity. Its strength depends on using a mathematically related public and private key, where the public key is intentionally shared, and the private key is controlled by an end entity to prove its identity. Quantum computers pose a risk to this paradigm, as they can perform mathematical operations much faster than classical computers. This could allow for quantum computers to derive an entity’s private key from their public key and perform operations while impersonating that entity. This report examines the role of PKI systems in the federal government of the United States (US), commonly used cryptographic algorithms throughout the US government, and how those algorithms could be made vulnerable to exploitation by the advancement of quantum computers. A comparison of the performance differences between Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA), a cryptographic algorithm commonly utilized by Federal PKI systems, and the Post-Quantum Resistant (PQR) digital signature algorithm, CRYSTALS-Dilithium, is also provided. The report concludes with an analysis of the performance of PQR algorithms and considerations that federal agencies will need to make when implementing PKI systems that utilize PQR algorithms.
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is, and should be, currently dominating the field of cybersecurity, with many works designing and evaluating the transition of communications security to quantum-safe solutions. As the security level and implementations of post-quantum algorithms become more mature, the research on their application to realistic conditions changes accordingly, especially their application to widely adopted network architectures and corresponding protocols such as the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). In this survey, we identified articles presenting ways of integrating PQC algorithms to PKI and classified related work according to the employed methods and benchmarking choices. The main results from many evaluations converge to similar conclusions on the performance of the most popular PC digital signature algorithms; however, modeling choices concerning architecture variants, hardware and measurement metrics vary. The diversity of the results and experimental setups makes comparison difficult and arrival at an objective conclusion regarding PKI requirements almost impossible. Ultimately, this review reveals a fragmented landscape of benchmarking practices for post-quantum PKI systems. The absence of standardized evaluation frameworks and common test environments limits the comparability and reproducibility of the findings. We aim to provide reference implementations, which are essential to guide the transition of PKI infrastructures toward robust, scalable, and quantum-resistant deployments.