Federal agencies take ‘most important’ first step with inventorying cryptography ahead of quantum migration, OMB official says

Federal agencies, on a journey over the next decade-plus to shore up their systems before the arrival of quantum computers, have made progress in starting to understand the scope of their legacy cryptographic encryption that will need to be replaced, according to a senior Biden administration cybersecurity official.

“For the first time in history, the civilian government, we have a comprehensive inventory of our asymmetric cryptography across all the agencies and their critical systems,” Nick Polk, senior adviser to the federal CISO, said Tuesday at GDIT’s Emerge Quantum event, produced by FedScoop.