Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) has emerged as a means to protect encryption from Quantum Computing (QC). Quantum Computing poses a threat towards classical cryptography because of its enhanced capability to solve complex mathematical problems quickly. To combat this, NIST has developed three standards for PQC: FIPS 203, FIPS 204, and FIPS 205. This study compares how the algorithms defined in FIPS 204 and FIPS 205, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA, compare to a baseline classical algorithm, Ed25519. Findings show that both ML-DSA and SLH-DSA offer slower signing times and verifying times compared to Ed25519. The algorithms also consume different amounts memory which can have an impact on future implementations. Future directions include the addition of future algorithms to improve the generability, a closer look at the ecological impacts as well as examining the component bottleneck in order to get a better understanding of how a switch towards these algorithms may impact the future.
Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) has emerged as a means to protect encryption from Quantum Computing (QC). Quantum Computing poses a threat towards classical cryptography because of its enhanced capability to solve complex mathematical problems quickly. To combat this, NIST has developed three standards for PQC: FIPS 203, FIPS 204, and FIPS 205. This study compares how the algorithms defined in FIPS 204 and FIPS 205, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA, compare to a baseline classical algorithm, Ed25519. Findings show that both ML-DSA and SLH-DSA offer slower signing times and verifying times compared to Ed25519. The algorithms also consume different amounts memory which can have an impact on future implementations. Future directions include the addition of future algorithms to improve the generability, a closer look at the ecological impacts as well as examining the component bottleneck in order to get a better understanding of how a switch towards these algorithms may impact the future.
The prospect of cryptographically relevant quantum computers threatens public-key primitives underpinning modern digital infrastructure, including RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic-curve cryptography. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) responds with algorithms believed to be hard for both classical and quantum adversaries. In August 2024, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finalised the first three PQC standards: FIPS 203 (ML-KEM, based on Kyber), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA, based on Dilithium), and FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA, based on SPHINCS+). This paper surveys the algorithmic families behind these standards, the harvest-now-decrypt-later threat model, hybrid migration strategies, performance trade-offs, and the engineering challenges of transitioning the global cryptographic stack. We examine deployment progress in TLS, SSH, X.509, and constrained devices, and outline open research questions on side-channel security, falcon-style signatures, and the long-term replacement schedule for classical asymmetric cryptography.
The impressively fast development of quantum computing is a serious threat to classical public-key cryptography, and algorithms such as Shor's and Grover's will render RSA and elliptic curve systems essentially useless as soon as a cryptanalytically relevant quantum computer becomes available. Although it is still some way off before such machines are available, the harvest-now-encrypt-later threat highlights the need for proactive defense. In response, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the first post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024, including ML-KEM (Kyber) for key establishment, ML-DSA (Dilithium) for digital signatures and SLH-DSA (SPHINCS+) as a stateless hash-based alternative. This paper is a summary of the evolving post-quantum landscape, starting with the standards and their underlying security and then moving on to migration policies such as CNSA 2.0 and CISA, NSA and NIST guidance. It also looks at integration patterns for important protocols such as TLS, IPsec, SSH, and code signing. A performance, interoperability and overhead evaluation methodology is presented with results showing that hybrid deployment and crypto-agile architectures make PQC adoption a viable option. The paper concludes by providing a governance-oriented roadmap, where inventory, prioritization and pilot deployments are identified as near-term actions, with open questions remaining on performance optimization, implementation security and algorithm resilience over time.
The recent introduction of Google’s Willow quantum chip has demonstrated remarkable computational capabilities, solving problems in microseconds that would take classical computers millions of years. As quantum computers advance toward cryptographic relevance, existing encryption algorithms become vulnerable to attacks that could break them within seconds or minutes, rendering current cryptographic protections ineffective. This necessitates the establishment of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards to secure systems in the quantum era. This study evaluates the performance of NIST-standardized PQC algorithms ML-KEM (512, 768, 1024) and ML-DSA (2, 3, 5) on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, representing baseline IoT device capabilities. Using the Liboqs library, each algorithm was executed across 1000 iterations in a real-world wireless network environment connected to a router, accounting for practical network conditions such as packet loss, latency, and jitter to assess computational feasibility under resource-constrained conditions. Experimental results demonstrate the practical viability of PQC algorithms in IoT environments. ML-KEM-512 achieves encapsulation in 55.76 μs and decapsulation in 56.15 μs, with key generation in 123.78 μs (median), while ML-DSA-44 completes signature generation in 379.83 μs and verification in 159.38 μs. These findings confirm that both ML-KEM and ML-DSA algorithms offer efficient and rapid performance, making them suitable candidates for securing IoT devices against quantum threats.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to classical cryptographic systems, particularly to widely used public-key schemes that rely on integer factorisation and the discrete logarithm problem. To ensure long-term data security against potential quantum adversaries, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is currently standardised by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This paper goes beyond a theoretical overview by employing a systematic methodology to evaluate the empirical performance trade-offs of the newly standardised algorithms (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA) and key finalists (FN-DSA and HQC). Based on a comprehensive review of fragmented performance data, the work presents a comparative analysis focusing on data overhead, computational latency, and resource efficiency. As a primary contribution, this study proposes a deployment-oriented taxonomy that explicitly maps these PQC standards to optimal practical use cases, considering diverse constraints across Internet of Things, cloud environments, and blockchain networks. Furthermore, the paper addresses critical real-world deployment challenges, such as vulnerabilities to side-channel attacks and hardware-level implementation constraints. Ultimately, this work systematises current knowledge into a unified decision-making framework, guiding system architects in complex migration towards a quantum-resilient digital ecosystem.
Federal policy now requires a transition to the NIST post-quantum standards ML-KEM (FIPS 203) and ML-DSA (FIPS 204). This report measures their computation time and message sizes at all standardized parameter sets on Google Colab cloud VM, against classical X25519, ECDSA P-256, and Ed25519. On Google Colab cloud VM, an ML-KEM-768 encapsulation took 28 microseconds and an ML-DSA-65 signature took 172 microseconds. Message size is the larger burden: one ML-KEM-768 exchange sends 2,272 bytes versus 64 for X25519, and an ML-DSA-65 public key plus signature is 5,261 bytes versus 96 for Ed25519. Timing was measured on a general-purpose platform as a reproducible baseline. Key, ciphertext, and signature sizes are identical on every platform, so the size results and their consequences for low-power wireless links apply directly to constrained devices; timing on constrained hardware is the next stage of this work. Code and raw data are available at https://github.com/iqrabatool/pqc-constrained-bench.
We benchmark the TLS 1.3 handshake using post-quantum cryptographic algorithms, including both key encapsulation mechanisms and digital signature schemes, and compare them against traditional, non-quantum-safe counterparts. Our evaluation covers all FIPS-approved post-quantum standards (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA), as well as a selection of digital signature schemes from second-round candidates of the NIST PQC competition that are available in the liboqs library from the Open Quantum Safe project. To assess real-world performance, we simulate various network conditions (rate, delay, and losses) and analyze the impact of post-quantum cryptography on TLS connection latency.