Starting next year, developers may need to demonstrate their security products are quantum-safe to receive a certification from France’s lead cybersecurity agency.
At the France Quantum conference, ANSSI chief of staff Samih Souissi said that the agency is aiming to apply this new standard in 2027 and that ideally by 2030 all products should be quantum-safe. While a certification from the agency is optional for many, it is required for any products used by the French government or critical infrastructure companies.
Quantum-safe compliance rush begins as timeline predictions become more severe
While France is not the first nation to set quantum-safe requirements of its sort, this move would put it at the head of the pack in terms of individual European nations and create an additional standard for organizations to factor into compliance considerations along with the bloc-wide NIS2 Directive and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). These EU-wide rules go into effect in late 2026 and may also be harmonized into a unified framework with the proposed Quantum Act around that time.
There is a running joke in quantum circles that the so-called “Q-Day,” when powerful and stable enough quantum computers are available to begin breaking current encryption standards, is perpetually about 10 years away. This dates back to when the threat first began to be visualized and enter the more general consciousness in the 1990s. Opinions still vary widely, and that is still the timeframe that numerous industry experts propose with the belief that this development could be as far off as 2035. However, expectations have stepped up recently with Google’s announcement that it has internally determined that this could feasibly come as soon as 2029 and that it is readying its own house in preparation for that possibility. Google is one of the leading players in quantum computing development with its Google Quantum AI division having already created the Willow chip and Sycamore processor architecture.
Josh Marpet, Senior Product Security Consultant with Finite State, thinks that it is wise to anticipate the real need for quantum-safe systems to be deployed along that general timeline: “Considering that certificate lifespans are down to 47 days as per 2029, and Google’s timeline for post quantum cryptography is 2029, and every single cipher suite used currently is deprecated by NIST in 2030, this actually sounds about right. In the next 12 months, if you don’t have a plan to inventory all Asymetric cryptography in your environment and start prioritizing and phasing out all non-post-quantum-cryptography, then you’ve got a problem!”
“The priority, of course, is all sensitive (restricted/confidential/your choice) information sent over the open internet. This is where it will get harvested from.” Marpet adds. “Internal data transfers from a data storage location to a data processing location, are, of course, important and need to be protected, but it’s much harder for someone to harvest it trivially. Also, internal data movement should be covered under your zero-trust initiative. You’ve got that running now, right? Just checking.”
Preparation has not kept up with revised quantum-safe timelines
In terms of establishing a quantum-safe timeline, there are more factors to consider than merely having new standards in place before quantum computers begin cracking current encryption standards. There is some question of which ones will go first; for example, some industry experts at the France Quantum conference opined that Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is a likely first candidate for cracking while others might possibly hold up for months or even years after breaking the first one or several is possible. Another issue is the “steal now, decrypt later” approach being employed by current-day hackers. Encrypted data is being hoarded with the expectation that sometime within a decade or two, the tools to trivially break it will eventually become available. If the data is already stolen, there is not much that can be done about this other than law enforcement finding the criminals and hoping all of their infrastructure and backups are seized before the data goes public.
All of this puts pressure on organizations to move on quantum-safe standards as soon as possible, but preparation has generally been slow. This may be owed to regulation pushing the issue also largely not being in place yet. Some organizations have EU Commission and US NIST rules to deal with at this point, but not all have firmed up or gone active as of yet. ANSSI would only be the third major player acting on businesses operating in the EU and possibly also the US, and their rules would not enter force until the start of 2027 at earliest.
It is also not necessarily a case of reticence, laziness or lack of awareness of the immediacy of the threat. The industry is broadly aware of the problem, but migration and ensuring compatibility with existing systems is a major mountain to climb for many. There have also simply not been quantum-safe options to move to until fairly recently; the first three “industry standards” just emerged from NIST in late 2024, with more still being evaluated and selected. Major software developers are only just beginning to settle on the standards they will implement going forward, such as Google announcing PQC digital signature protection for Android (starting with the very recently-released version 17) in April 2026.
The France Quantum conference did indicate that demand for quantum-safe security solutions is rising, however. Some industry analysis based on current demand sees this segment of the cybersecurity industry growing from about $1.2 billion globally at present to about 10 times that amount within 10 years. For its part France has been one of the countries investing most heavily in quantum readiness, rolling out a national plan that it has committed three billion euros (or about $3.5 billion) to.
While no one can see into the future, the general expectation remains that current public-key encryption algorithms will need to be in the deprecation process by 2030 and entirely out of service by 2035. But John Strand, Owner of Black Hills Information Security, Inc., advises:
“Quantum computing deserves attention, but it shouldn’t become a distraction. Organizations should be aware of the long-term implications and monitor developments closely, especially as we move toward 2030. However, the heavy lifting around post-quantum cryptography belongs primarily to the vendors building the hardware, software, and security products that the rest of us rely on. For most enterprises, the biggest risks today still come from weak identities, poor visibility, unpatched systems, and basic security failures. Focus on getting the fundamentals right while keeping an eye on where quantum technology is headed.”
