PQC Ready with the Click of a Button
Albeit not THAT button...
The Quantum Dragon was hired by a US government intelligence agency to secure one of its datacenters, and physical incidents are down 115%. That’s right: previous uncaught intruders have come back to confess. After all, trust me, you don’t want a fire-breathing dragon hunting you down. Unfortunately, though, his local presence doesn’t protect against global digital threats. He needed to find a partner quickly.
Fortunately, he found an announcement from QuSecure.
What’s the big deal?
Something about “QuSecure QuProtect R3 Listed in AWS ‘ICMP’ for the U.S. Federal Government” read differently. If The Quantum Dragon added an algorithm to the Qiskit Functions Catalog, for example, you’d simply say, “whoop-de-doo.” He’s trying to commercialize it. No big deal. QuSecure obviously listed QuProtect R3 on AWS to commercialize it, so what’s the big deal, right?
PQC isn’t optional! Let’s remember that there is a relatively new executive order, EO 14412, that mandates moving to key establishment by 2030 and digital signatures by 2031. Furthermore, EO 14412 builds on EO 14306, which makes TLS 1.3 mandatory, and which is covered by QuProtect R3. Solutions need to be acquired and implemented, and then, of course, there’s reporting and compliance monitoring afterward. QuProtect R3 on AWS means that US government intelligence agencies can satisfy all of these mandates and become PQC Ready literally with the click of a button, and there’s nothing whoop-de-doo about that.
That was easy.
By clicking that button, QuProtect R3 delivers reconnaissance (discovery of systems), remediation/resilience (how to bring the new algorithms), and reporting (dashboard). Remediation is itself a big deal, as it’s included in EO 14412, and it’s apparently not a universal feature in PQC solutions. Also, the dashboard gives you a score, akin to a credit score, letting you know how well you’ve done. Furthermore, nothing has to be ripped or replaced, and QuProtect R3 even goes out to edge devices.
Conclusion
For the record, The Quantum Dragon’s “easy” button is a mouse. He’s magical, but he’s not that magical. You can’t see the monitor, which is out of frame, but the featured image is a photograph I took of him on AWS, getting ready to click on QuProtect R3.
It’s important not to gloss over that this is the US government we’re talking about. Acquisitions, implementations, and annual reporting have not historically been characterized as easy, and there’s no way to not make that phrase sound like an understatement. It’s hard, or at least it was hard. To the credit of QuSecure and AWS, addressing harvest now, decrypt later has actually become easy.
QuSecure’s CEO, Rebecca Krauthamer, will be speaking at PQC+IQT, which is coming to New York City October 25-26.
