Draft post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards have been published by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The new framework is designed to help organizations protect themselves from future quantum-enabled cyber-attacks.
The draft documents were published on August 24, 2023, and encompass three draft Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS).
These standards were selected by NIST following a process that began in December 2016, when the agency issued a public call for submissions to the PQC Standardization Process.
After several rounds of selection, NIST announced the four encryption algorithms that would form its PQC standard in July 2022. The CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm was chosen for general encryption (used for access to secure websites) and CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON and SPHINCS+ were selected for digital signatures.
These algorithms are incorporated into the three FIPS published by NIST.
