Planning for a Post-quantum World, Now!

One of the primary concerns occupying future-gazers within the technology industry is the impact that quantum advances will have upon established encryption methods. Quantum computing is advancing at pace, and alongside the enthusiasm for what that will enable is a practical concern for the way quantum processing might render some of today’s security approaches ineffective. 

While standard encryption techniques have protected users and enterprises well up to now, there’s now an urgent need to develop techniques and algorithms that can withstand a large-scale quantum incursion. 

Today’s cryptography methodologies rely upon mathematical concepts that are difficult for today’s computers to solve. A large-scale quantum computer, however, may find it much easier to crack these encryptions in the future. This could lead to attackers being able to compromise highly sensitive and critical communications and systems, and even expose secure messaging and data that was stolen in past attacks, a threat known as “harvest now, decrypt later” (HNDL). With these risks in mind, the time to take action is now.

Post-quantum cryptography (or PQC) refers to cryptographic techniques and algorithms that are being specifically designed to withstand reverse engineering attacks by powerful quantum computers. There are multiple tracks of research in progress across academia and private industry, all working to come up with secure and efficient algorithms that are quantum safe. 

These are five different places within the Netskope One architecture where encryption is used, and to ensure our platform remains secure as quantum computers become a reality, all of these have been evaluated to determine what needs to be adjusted for a post-quantum attack.

We are focusing on NIST’s PQC algorithms (specifically ML-KEM 768) to build out greater protections across our infrastructure.  Quantum-resilient Netskope One is currently in development and we intend for it to be available for sandbox testing by customers shortly. This will provide the full existing platform functionality of Netskope One based on the NIST’s recommendations.

While optimistic studies purport that these encryption architectures will still be safe for many years to come, we aren’t taking chances and are instead already acting to strengthen encryption within the Netskope One platform now, to ensure we can maintain the promises that we deliver to customers: protecting data everywhere it goes.

If you’d like to understand more of the technical specifics about the way Netskope is securing encryption in an impendingly quantum world, check out the new short white paper, Preparing for a Future with Post-quantum Cryptography.