Many popular cryptographic algorithms and encryption schemes will be broken by advances in quantum computing. Without preparation, sensitive data protected by encryption schemes will become accessible, the communication infrastructure will be disrupted, and our transactions and information will be vulnerable to criminals, thereby affecting countless organizations and millions of people. Quantum-safe (QS) trust services, including their underlying Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), are needed to protect digital societies against these substantial risks.
Scientific breakthroughs are required in the domain of QS cryptography, PKI development, and migration architectures, including both technical and governance aspects. Developing and migrating towards a QS PKI is not just a technical problem, as it is interlinked with the organizational realities. Any technical QS PKI solution must be integrated into the existing landscape and needs to be governed.
An additional challenge is that each sector has its own path dependencies and decision structures, resulting in an institutional void surrounding QS PKI. Although the development of growth paths towards QS infrastructures for organizations is critical, this task is complicated by the variety of legacy systems and possibilities for constructing QS solutions. Growth paths are dependent on the interplay between technology and governance aspects and are context-dependent. Hence, this project will deliver sector-based growth paths towards QS PKIs, including hybrid PKIs that consider both interoperability and backward compatibility, as well as governance models for guiding organizations to move their systems into a QS future. This will be done in collaboration with frontrunners in the telecom sector, financial sector, public sector, and healthcare.
The scientific breakthroughs expected in this project include contributions to QS encryption, QS PKI designs, PKI migration architectures and strategies, and growth paths towards a QS infrastructure. Dissemination will be accelerated through a massive open online course, an awareness game, and via workshops hosted by the partners.
