Post-quantum cryptography news worth a board’s time: standards, regulation and research. Our top stories are summarised in our own words and reviewed by us (18 October 2026). Everything links to the original source.
Chosen and summarised by us.
The NCSC now recommends post-quantum set-ups for TLS, covering both hybrid options (post-quantum plus traditional) and pure post-quantum ones. TLS 1.3 is the only version that supports them, so anything still on TLS 1.2 or older needs to move. The NCSC ties this to its 2031 target for high-priority work and says guidance on IPsec and on post-quantum authentication will follow.
Source: National Cyber Security Centre
RFC 10024 specifies three ways to combine the NIST-standardised ML-KEM with a conventional elliptic-curve exchange, so a connection stays protected if either half is later broken. The X25519 option is already the most widely deployed, and the NCSC's October guidance follows this standard.
Source: IETF, RFC Editor
Google estimates that 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography could be broken by a superconducting quantum computer about 20 times smaller than earlier estimates suggested (under 500,000 physical qubits, the building blocks of a quantum computer). It withheld the attack circuits and published a proof that the claim holds. These are estimates, not a working machine, but the target keeps getting closer.
Source: Google Research
The roadmap asks member states to start by the end of 2026 with national strategies and inventories of the cryptography they use, to protect high-risk systems such as critical infrastructure by the end of 2030, and to migrate as much as is practical by 2035.
Source: European Commission
The NCSC sets three dates for UK organisations: finish discovery and draw up a plan by 2028, complete the highest-priority migrations by 2031, and finish migrating everything by 2035. The guidance is aimed mainly at large organisations, operators of critical national infrastructure and companies with bespoke IT.
Source: National Cyber Security Centre
FIPS 203 (ML-KEM) covers general encryption. FIPS 204 (ML-DSA) covers digital signatures. FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA) is a second signature standard built on a different mathematical approach, as a fallback. NIST urged organisations to start integrating them straight away.
Source: NIST
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