The encryption protecting most enterprise software today — including passwords, certificates, and identity tokens — relies on mathematical problems that classical computers cannot solve in a reasonable timeframe. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could solve those same problems in hours. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) uses different mathematical foundations that remain hard even for quantum computers.

NIST finalized the first post-quantum cryptographic standards in August 2024: FIPS 203 (ML-KEM, for key encapsulation) and FIPS 204 (ML-DSA, for digital signatures). QuantPass is built on both from day one.

Most enterprise encryption today relies on two mathematical problems:

Integer factorization — RSA encryption is secure because factoring large numbers into primes is computationally infeasible on classical hardware. A 2048-bit RSA key would take classical computers longer than the age of the universe to break.

Elliptic curve discrete logarithm — ECDSA (used in TLS certificates, passkeys, and most modern authentication) is secure because solving the discrete logarithm problem on elliptic curves is hard for classical computers.

Both problems are efficiently solvable by a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor's algorithm. This is not theoretical — Shor's algorithm has been mathematically proven to break both RSA and ECDSA. The only open question is when quantum computers will be powerful enough to run it at scale against real-world key sizes.

NIST's current estimate: cryptographically relevant quantum computers arrive by 2031. US government agencies are required to complete PQC migration by 2035.

ML-KEM-1024 (FIPS 203) — formerly known as CRYSTALS-Kyber. Used for key encapsulation: securely establishing a shared secret between two parties. QuantPass uses ML-KEM-1024 for vault encryption key derivation.

ML-DSA-44 (FIPS 204) — formerly known as CRYSTALS-Dilithium. Used for digital signatures: proving that a message came from a specific party without revealing the private key. QuantPass uses ML-DSA-44 for every authentication event.

Both algorithms are based on the hardness of lattice problems — mathematical structures that remain computationally hard even for quantum computers running known quantum algorithms.

Many vendors describe their products as "quantum-resistant" or "quantum-safe" without specifying what that means. In most cases, they mean AES-256 symmetric encryption — which is indeed harder to break with a quantum computer (Grover's algorithm provides only a quadratic speedup, not the exponential speedup Shor's provides). But AES-256 is only used for data at rest. The key exchange and authentication mechanisms — the parts that establish who you are and derive the encryption keys — still rely on RSA or ECDSA in those products.

QuantPass replaces the key exchange and authentication layer with NIST-standardized algorithms, not just the symmetric encryption layer. This is the distinction that matters for HNDL defense.

The right time to migrate to post-quantum cryptography is before quantum computers arrive, not after. An adversary who intercepts your encrypted traffic today and stores it can decrypt it the moment a capable quantum computer becomes available. This is the Harvest Now, Decrypt Later threat — and it means that credentials and certificates protected only by classical cryptography are already at risk, even if no quantum computer can break them yet.

QuantPass protects new credentials from the moment they're stored. Migrating to QuantPass is a present-day risk reduction, not a future-proofing exercise.