2024 Outlook with Ben Packman of PQShield

Ben Packman, Senior Vice President at PQShield, leads global expansion through sales and partner growth across multiple vertical markets, alongside taking a lead role in briefing both government and the supply chain on the quantum threat.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.
PQShield is a post-quantum cryptography company creating the global standards and core technologies that will form the future security layer protecting the world’s leading organisations. Its quantum-secure cryptographic solutions work with companies’ legacy systems to protect sensitive data now and for years to come

As Senior Vice President, I am responsible for leading PQShield’s strategy and development. Our team is shaping the way our digital world is protected against the threats of tomorrow. In a time when quantum computers will soon be able to break current cryptography methods, we’re focused on empowering organisations, industries, and nations, with the ultimate quantum-resistant cryptography solutions.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2024 will be, and why?
NIST’s post-quantum cryptography standards are due to be published within months, which will become the benchmark for cybersecurity globally. This will serve as a major growth area for PQShield as we expect to see a lot more companies taking the migration to post-quantum cryptography seriously.

We are able to guarantee to customers that our IP licensed products will be compliant with NIST standards giving them the confidence to incorporate our solutions into their post-quantum cryptography transition planning.

One area in particular where we expect to see growth is in the semiconductor and defence sectors, given their key position within the global supply chain and their need to secure highly sensitive data respectively.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?
PQShield has already developed a mature suite of NIST compliant solutions across software, hardware and cloud applications and is already licensing its IP to strategic partners.

Several of PQShield’s customers that produce both software and hardware products are set to launch new solutions in 2024 that are already utilising PQShield IP. We have already partnered with industry leading semiconductor manufacturers like Microchip, AMD and Lattice, and world renowned defence contractors like MBDA and Collins Aerospace.

We’ve also focused on real-world implementation issues such as side channel and fault injection protection – we have our own lab in Oxford that we developed and verified working with Riscure and eShard. PQShield is leading the way in this area to ensure that our post-quantum cryptography solutions are robust.

What conferences will you be attending this year? 
We’ll be on the road a lot this year. We already have over 13 under our belt including Mobile World Congress Barcelona and OFC US. We’ve also had the pleasure of co-exhibiting with partners like AMD and Lattice at some of these events to showcase our products on the ground. 

Coming up we have IQT Europe, RSA Conference, The Economist Commercialising Quantum, HOST, CyberUK, FPGA Conference, RISC-V Summit, CHES and many others. By the end of the year we’ll have done around 50 events!

We are also very privileged to be co-hosting PQCrypto in our home in Oxford this year – gathering some of the brightest cryptographic minds from across the globe at the Oxford University Maths Institute, where PQShield began.

Additional questions or final comments?
Within a decade, the mathematical defences that currently keep online information safe will be at risk from a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, sufficiently powerful to break those defences. In fact, even before quantum technology exists, there’s a significant risk of ‘harvest-now-decrypt-later’ attacks, poised to extract stolen encrypted information when the technology to do so becomes available. We believe it’s critical that industries, organisations, governments, and manufacturers are aware of the threat, and follow the best roadmap to quantum resistance.

We are at a critical moment in this transition. With a recent wave of early legislation in the US, such as NSM-10 and HR.7535, as well as CNSA 2.0 and the National Cybersecurity Strategy, federal agencies and government departments are now mandated to prepare and budget for migration to full PQC by 2033. Simultaneously in Europe, cybersecurity organisations such as ANSSI (French Cybersecurity Agency) and BSI (German Federal Office for Information Security) have published key recommendations on the quantum security transition, and in the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is recommending clear next steps in preparing for post-quantum cryptography. Internationally the awareness is growing among governments of the challenge ahead. We recently presented at the European Parliament, attended a roundtable discussion at the White House, and we’ve been key contributors to the World Economic Forum on regulation for the financial sector. 

When it comes to the security of tomorrow, the time to prepare is today, and at PQShield, we’re focused on shaping the way the digital world is protected from the inevitable quantum threat. 

Also Read:

Crypto modernization timeline starting to take shape

WEBINAR: Secure messaging in a post-quantum world

NIST Standardizes PQShield Algorithms for International Post-Quantum Cryptography