Quantum‑Ready Crypto: Discovery to Transformation
Key Points
- Quantum computers will soon be able to break today’s encryption, enabling fraud‑ultra‑authentication, forged signatures, and “harvest‑now/decrypt‑later” attacks on stored enterprise data.
- The first defensive step is to discover all cryptographic artifacts in both source and object code and compile a Cryptography Bill of Materials (CBOM), akin to an SBOM, to create a single source of truth.
- Organizations must then observe their cryptography by combining static analysis with dynamic runtime monitoring to inventory assets across applications and network layers (e.g., TLS/SSL).
- With a full inventory, leaders should prioritize assets based on risk exposure, regulatory compliance, and overall cryptographic posture.
- Finally, the prioritized assets must be transformed by replacing vulnerable algorithms with quantum‑safe encryption methods.
Sections
Full Transcript
# Quantum‑Ready Crypto: Discovery to Transformation **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5t0m_nd4hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5t0m_nd4hk) **Duration:** 00:06:07 ## Summary - Quantum computers will soon be able to break today’s encryption, enabling fraud‑ultra‑authentication, forged signatures, and “harvest‑now/decrypt‑later” attacks on stored enterprise data. - The first defensive step is to discover all cryptographic artifacts in both source and object code and compile a Cryptography Bill of Materials (CBOM), akin to an SBOM, to create a single source of truth. - Organizations must then observe their cryptography by combining static analysis with dynamic runtime monitoring to inventory assets across applications and network layers (e.g., TLS/SSL). - With a full inventory, leaders should prioritize assets based on risk exposure, regulatory compliance, and overall cryptographic posture. - Finally, the prioritized assets must be transformed by replacing vulnerable algorithms with quantum‑safe encryption methods. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5t0m_nd4hk&t=0s) **Untitled Section** - ## Full Transcript
Today cryptography is the ultimate line of defense that protects our data. But it's based on
an assumption that it cannot be broken by classical computers. In the near future, quantum computers
may be able to crack these encryption algorithms. That's why every organizational leader needs
to understand the risk to their data and the solutions that will make them quantum safe.
Let's get to it.
What bad actors and cyber criminals can do once quantum computers mature? First
thing they can do is fraudulent authentication, which means they can get access to our data--the
secure data that we have in our applications, our systems, and our databases. Second thing they can
do is forge signatures, which means they can fake the records, fake the audits, and also can make
the fake identity and tamper [with] our blockchain assets as well. Third thing they can do is harvest
now/decrypt later, which is very, very important for us today. We are understanding that they
cannot steal and decrypt the data today, but they will be sitting on it until the quantum computers
mature and they will be able to decrypt that and find out the crown jewels from your enterprise.
The first step is to discover. Discover your cryptography means you need to identify the
cryptography-relevant artifacts in your business applications--source code as well as object code.
What this means is that brings you the visibility where the cryptography function library's
methods are being used. Once you have them, you need to also find out the dependencies
across all of these artifacts and then create a single source of truth. A similar concept like
in a supply chain inventory called SBOM (software bill of materials). You need to have the concept
called cryptography bill of materials (CBOM). IBM has been helping bringing that as a standard as
part of the CycloneDX. And this capability can bring you a static view of your business applications
environment. Once you have this, the next step is observe. Observe your cryptography means
bringing the dynamic view along with static view. Often many organizations have either one
or the other, but you need to have both. And as part of bringing both of these together,
you need to have a full inventory of your cryptography assets from network perspective as
well as your applications' perspective. And then you need to understand how these key exchanges are
happening from cryptography perspective like TLS, SSL from your network environments. And then once
you get the full visibility of that inventory, you need to prioritize where your cryptography
relevant artifacts are important based on your cryptography posture or your regulatory
compliance requirements, and then create that list. And once you have the prioritized
inventory of your cryptography assets, you need to transform the cryptography by implementing
and applying the quantum safe algorithms, or encryption algorithms, or new certificates,
or key lifecycle management capabilities that are quantum safe. By doing this, you need to make sure
that you are also following a process that you can achieve crypto-agility. What we mean by
crypto-agility is that [is] how can you reduce the burden on development as well as the operational
environment so that it's not disrupting your existing systems and applications--and rather
giving you an ability to move from old algorithms to new algorithms seamlessly, which means you can
have crypto-agility as a service capabilities, starting from encryption, key lifecycle management
and certificate management capabilities that would be quantum safe. And whenever you need
them in your business applications, you can simply make an API call when you need a new encryption,
when you need a new certificate, when you need a new key in general. So this helps you bring a full
capability across Discover, Observe and Transform. Now you understand the three key steps. What tools
should we use to get to your journey to quantum safe? IBM Quantum Safe Explorer helps you discover
your cryptography by scanning the source code and object code of your enterprise applications. Also,
it can create and generate the CBOM, what we call the cryptography bill of materials. This
gives you the static view of your IT enterprise applications. IBM Quantum Safe Advisor can help
you bring both the static as well as the dynamic view of your cryptography assets
and also prioritize them based on the cryptography posture in reference to your compliance and the
vulnerabilities. IBM Quantum Safe Remediator is a capability that can bring and allow you
to remediate with quantum safe algorithms, quantum safe key management capabilities,
as well as the certificate management capabilities that can allow you to be crypto-agile. And there
are a set of remediation patterns that are part of Remediator that can enable you based on your
requirements in terms of VPN, in terms of proxy, in terms of TLS connections. All
of those remediation patterns are based on the best practices that we know as of now,
based on our current client needs. IBM Quantum Safe can help any organization not only prepare
for the post quantum cybersecurity landscape, but also improve and maintain their cyber security
hygiene overall. How your organization can prepare for the quantum era--Check out the links below.