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

What this post added

This post discusses the White House's Executive Order 14412, mandating federal agencies and contractors to transition to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) by specific deadlines (2030 for encryption, 2031 for authentication). It highlights Cloudflare's proactive work in this area, including its own 2029 readiness target and the deployment of PQC across various products. The post analyzes the EO's requirements, differentiates between post-quantum encryption and authentication, and discusses the challenges and importance of migrating to PQC, particularly for federal contractors. It also mentions Cloudflare's contributions to standards development via the IETF and its efforts to address performance issues with post-quantum authentication, such as Merkle Tree Certificates.