Facing the quantum giant: Nomidio’s biometrics and Post-Quantum encryption algorithms
+ While Nomidio is the primary digital ID brand, its sister company Post-Quantum ventures into a largely undiscovered dimension of the digital frontier: Quantum-safe encryption. Cheng explains why he launched Post-Quantum ten years ago, “Post Quantum is all about deep tech, post-quantum cryptography, and some of the other, I would say funkier stuff.”
Nomidio is also well prepared to face the future as it uses quantum-safe encryption within its own mechanisms, according to Black. “We are waiting for the rest of the world to catch up because any interaction that you have over the internet involves browsers and devices and all sorts of different parts of that chain, none of which currently support quantum-safe encryption,” Black observes. “We do, however, at the underlying level of our system. We have that in place and ready to use, while the rest of the world catches up as these threats become real.”
+ Post-Quantum believes that quantum computing poses a looming threat to our conventional public-key encryption that presently guards all data on the internet. The company fears that encryption algorithms such as RSA, Elliptic Curve, and ElGamal, while groundbreaking, are no match to quantum computers. Post-Quantum thus embarked on a journey to revolutionize the digital realm by creating a quantum-safe algorithm that might become the new international standard for data encryption.
+ Realizing this looming threat, the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) began searching for a new security paradigm and opened a competition to find the next quantum-safe encryption method. Now, Post-Quantum’s algorithm is the sole remaining finalist in one of two categories. The company is hopeful that its quantum-safe encryption algorithm will be chosen in 2022 by NIST to set the new global standard to replace RSA and Elliptic Curve algorithms.
+ Cheng also foresees a stampede once the NIST results are published. Governments and actors from various private sector industries will scramble as they have to revise their security algorithms. Yet, the implementation of quantum-safe algorithms is not an easy affair as it might carry unwanted secondary characteristics that might break existing infrastructure. Therefore, Cheng advises against inaction while waiting for the NIST results. “The entire ecosystem still needs to be built, and NIST only focuses on one aspect, which is the algorithm. But how about the rest?” Cheng adds.
+ Nomidio and Post-Quantum decided to start the future-proofing process by focusing on identity. “The entire architecture, the thinking, and the design were from the ground up,” he explains. When we designed it, we knew exactly where we would be using public-key cryptography, like Elliptic Curve. And when the time comes and we have to make the [post quantum] switch, we know exactly what to swap out and swap in. To us, this process would take only a few hours, and a few days to do the testing.”
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