The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced the signing of nine letters of intent to provide $2.013 billion in federal incentives that will support a portfolio of American quantum companies. These incentives support two domestic quantum foundry companies and seven quantum computing companies. This action is designed to strengthen the country’s lead in this frontier technology.

(November 12, 2024) The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released an initial public draft report on transitioning to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards. This report describes NIST’s expected approach to transitioning from quantum-vulnerable cryptographic algorithms to post-quantum digital signature algorithms and key-establishment schemes. It identifies existing quantum-vulnerable cryptographic standards and the current quantum-resistant standards that will be used in the migration. The report also provides dates for the deprecating and disallowing of several algorithms currently used for digital signatures and key establishment. This report should inform the efforts and timelines of federal agencies, industry, and standards organizations for migrating information technology products, services, and infrastructure to PQC.

(August 13, 2024) The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has finalized its principal set of encryption algorithms designed to withstand cyberattacks from a quantum computer. Researchers around the world are racing to build quantum computers that would operate in radically different ways from ordinary computers and could break the current encryption that provides security and privacy for just about everything we do online. To defend against this vulnerability, the recently announced algorithms are specified in the first completed standards from NIST’s post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standardization project and are ready for immediate use. These post-quantum encryption standards secure a wide range of electronic information, from confidential email messages to e-commerce transactions that propel the modern economy. NIST is encouraging computer system administrators to begin transitioning to the new standards as soon as possible.

(September 13, 2023) Last year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) selected four algorithms designed to withstand attack by quantum computers. Now the agency has begun the process of standardizing these algorithms — the final step before making these mathematical tools available so that organizations around the world can integrate them into their encryption infrastructure.