In May 2016 I was fortunate to be able to attend most of a symposium sponsored by the Computer and Telecommunications Science Board (CSTB) of the National Academies that dealt with society’s ability to change out cryptographic algorithms in the networked infrastructure (think public key cryptography (PKI) here, which underpins all kinds of fundamental technologies like SSL/TLS). This eye-opening and disturbing (at least for me) discussion was largely driven by the potential (though controversial and complicated) not-too-distant emergence of quantum computing, which might well put much of the current PKI at risk, and the prospects for dealing with it. If this is not on your radar screen for the 5-20 year future (and the big time range uncertainty is part of the problem) it should be, in my opinion.
The report from this symposium has is now available. There’s a free PDF download. It’s at
Background on the workshop is at
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DEPS/CYBER/DEPS_171459
Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI
