The White House's post-quantum executive order is an important milestone. It’s time to get to work

This post discusses the US government's Executive Order 14412 mandating the transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) for federal agencies and contractors. It highlights the deadlines for PQC encryption (2030) and authentication (2031), and Cloudflare's own roadmap towards full PQC security by 2029. The post emphasizes the importance of PQC for both encryption (to prevent harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks) and authentication (to stop quantum-enabled impersonation and forging). It notes the challenges in migrating authentication systems due to larger signature sizes and longer dependency chains. Cloudflare's existing deployment of PQC encryption across its network is mentioned, along with ongoing work on PQC authentication and contributions to IETF standards. The role of federal contractors in driving PQC adoption is also discussed.