Day Two Cloud 195: Planning For Post-Quantum Cryptography

Today’s Day Two Cloud explores post-quantum cryptography and how to make your cryptographic secrets safe from quantum computers. We’re looking at a time horizon of at least five or ten years, so this isn’t an immediate threat, but it doesn’t hurt to start thinking about it now. We dive into how quantum computing and quantum encryption work, their impact on cryptographic secrets, what it means for technologies such as IPSec VPNs, and more. Melchior Aelmans is our guest. Melchior works on the service provider architecture team at Juniper Networks and has written a free-to-download book on quantum-safe IPSec VPNs. This is not a sponsored episode. We discuss: * The challenges of trying to protect data now that could be vulnerable in five or ten years * The types of data at risk * An overview of how quantum computing works and how it can attack current encryption techniques * BB84, a quantum key distribution scheme * What standards bodies are doing around quantum computing and encryption * More Takeaways: Start building knowledge now by participating in POCs, following work in IETF, ETSI, etc. Think about the value of your data, should you be worried or is your data worthless in let’s say 10 years (steal/harvest now, decrypt later attack) It’s a fascinating topic and it’s only starting now so plenty of opportunity for new ideas and collaboration between scientists/physicists and ‘classical networking engineers’ Show Links: DAY ONE: QUANTUM-SAFE IPSEC VPNS – Juniper Networks (PDF) RFC 8784 – Mixing Preshared Keys in the Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2 (IKEv2) for Post-quantum Security – IETF BB84 Quantum Key Distribution – Wikipedia @melchioraelmans – Melchior Aelmans on Twitter Melchior Aelmans on LinkedIn