2025 Outlook with Dr Axel Y. Poschmann of PQShield

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

The PQShield team helped define the new PQC (post-quantum cryptography) standards that will be used to replace current encryption that is vulnerable to attack by quantum computers. Now, we work with international blue-chip organizations, disruptive scale-ups, and national bodies throughout the technology supply chain to deliver the secure transition to quantum safety.

I have worked in hardware security for the past 20 years across Asia, Europe, the US and Middle East in industry and academia. In a time when quantum computers will soon be able to break current cryptography methods, I am focused on empowering organizations, industries and nations with the quantum-resistant cryptography solutions they need to protect themselves.

What was the most exciting high point of 2024 for your company?

This year was a momentous one in the history of post-quantum cryptography with the publication of the NIST PQC standards FIPS 203, FIPS 204, and FIPS 205. This marked the culmination of eight years of hard work from the global cryptographic community and was also a high point for the PQShield team, who contributed to all three of the final standards.

But more exciting is what comes next. The NIST standards have fired the starting gun for the PQC transition, as businesses armed with these standards now have the tools to implement their PQC transition roadmaps. After years of discussions around crypto discovery, we can finally focus on the secure implementation of PQC, an area particularly close to my heart – particularly looking at hardware implementations and resistance to side-channel and fault injection attacks (SCA and FI).

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2024?

The challenge we face is that we are replacing RSA, ECDSA and similar encryption – well understood and thoroughly tested over many years – with PQC, which is fundamentally new, based on different mathematics, and not a like-for-like replacement. There will be hurdles to cross as we work to deliver the most fundamental upgrade to our cybersecurity infrastructure in a generation.

As anyone in cybersecurity knows, attackers are always working to find new vulnerabilities and methods to crack encryption. As we roll out PQC across our digital infrastructure, our work is focused on ensuring that every line of code we write, every mathematical problem we solve, and every interaction we make is focused on one specific goal: keeping us all one step ahead of the attackers.

How is your company’s work addressing this biggest challenge?

A significant milestone for us was the certification of our  PQCryptoLib, PQShield’s hybrid cryptographic library, which has achieved FIPS-140-3 certification under the NIST CMVP process.

This represents a huge three-year team effort. PQCryptoLib is the library that underpins many of PQShield’s products – including the PQPlatform hardware IP family. While there will be many iterations of our products put forward for certification, this achievement represents a quality threshold that can now be attained by PQC.

Off the back of this effort, towards the summer of 2024 we introduced our first fully functional PQC silicon test chip. By building our own ASIC, we can now demonstrate and test our IP in the way that a customer will use it. We’re able to evaluate its operation in real detail, looking at how to be compliant against the NIST standards and perform security testing in a way that would be practically difficult on a customer product deployed in the field.

As we look forward to next year, we will start to see hardware manufacturers bringing new PQC products to market and we are primed as key partners to help them on that journey.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2025 will be, and why?

For the vast majority of organizations, their ability to transition to PQC will be dependent on their supply chain’s ability to deliver PQC secure products. Therefore, businesses that sit at the foundation of the supply chain – particularly semiconductor manufacturers – are primed for growth and disruption.

As our lives are increasingly digitized through the cloud, businesses operate more advanced industrial IoT, and AI continues to drive demand for high throughput semiconductors, the introduction of PQC enabled hardware is only going to increase demand in this highly competitive sector.

Following the announcement of NIST standards, I expect we will be ending 2025 with quantum security firmly on the agenda of every boardroom in the global technology supply chain.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?

PQShield is already well placed to help the semiconductor and hardware industries meet this demand. We now have long standing collaborations with Microchip Technologies, AMD and Lattice Semiconductors among others to help develop PQC solutions. Our extensive product suite is helping customers to implement PQC into their design pipelines to ensure quantum secure products reach the market in the new year.

To help us meet this growing demand, we have significantly expanded our corporate function to support global expansion across Europe, the US and Asia. This includes additions to our executive and strategic advisory board, with Antonio J. Viana (BrainChip, Arteris, Parsley, former Arm executive) joining as Non-Executive Director alongside three new additions to our strategic advisory board to accelerate growth into 2025: Mike Muller (co-founder and former CTO, Arm), Rose Schooler (former CVP, Intel, and current Arm board member), and Ian Drew (former chairman at Foundries.io, and CMO at Arm).

Knowing we’re on the precipice of the biggest technological transition in a generation, we’re confident that we have the team and the products to help the market grow in 2025.

What conferences did you attend in 2024 and how was the traffic?

Events are a key opportunity for us to meet our customers and help them to address their questions and concerns around PQC. Two big tentpole events for us last year were Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona and RSA in San Francisco. At both, we were able to showcase our collaboration with AMD and demonstrate how PQShield’s PQPerform PQC hardware accelerator was installed on the programmable logic of the AMD Versal Adaptive SoC.

Will you attend conferences in 2025? Same or more?

We will be back at MWC and RSA again next year and will be showing how our products have progressed following the publication of NIST’s standards.

Our team loves to get out and about and we have over 20 conferences we plan to attend just in the first half of 2025 alone! To name a few we have CES, Embedded World, CyberUK, DAC, DSEI 2025 and many others.

How do customers engage with your company?

You can connect with us on LinkedIn where we regularly highlight the events we’re attending as well as our latest research. We also have a monthly newsletter that shares the latest developments in PQC and at PQShield.

Get in touch if you have any concerns about planning your own PQC transition as the industry enters the execution phase. Our team has experience across the full spectrum of industry sectors and potential use cases, and is already advising both governments and global enterprises on this transition.

Additional questions or final comments?

Quantum-safe secure boot and PQ/T hybrid requirements are the main challenges moving forward.

The foundation of modern cybersecurity lies in the secure boot process, ensuring only trusted and authenticated software runs on a device. By validating code integrity through cryptographic signatures, secure boot upholds the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability triad, acting as the first line of defense against tampering, malware, and unauthorized changes.

The European Union and relevant agencies, such as ANSSI and BSI, advocate for a Post-Quantum/Traditional (PQ/T) hybrid cryptographic model, combining quantum-resistant algorithms with traditional cryptography for added resilience. Implementing quantum-safe secure boot remains challenging due to the performance, scalability, and compliance trade-offs of PQ/T solutions.

I am excited that we are developing a flexible Root of Trust to address this challenge, enabling diverse platforms—embedded systems, edge devices, and Critical National Infrastructure—to transition to quantum-resistant architectures seamlessly.

About PQShield

PQShield comprises a world-class collaboration of post-quantum cryptographers, engineers, and operators. We’ve helped shape all of the first international PQC NIST standards, and we were the first cybersecurity company to develop quantum-safe cryptography on chips, in applications, and in the cloud.

Also Read:

PQShield Demystifies Post-Quantum Cryptography with Leadership Lounge

PQShield Builds the First-Ever Post-Quantum Cryptography Chip

One Step Ahead of the Quantum Threat