Encryption & Key Management
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Security Operations
Computing Giant Warns Against Future Decryption of Secure Communications
Google adopted quantum-safe digital signatures for its cloud environment designed to help users combat the next phase of adversarial attacks. The announcement from the company comes days after Microsoft unveiled its latest quantum chip.
See Also: Cracking the Code: Securing Machine Identities
The computing giant said quantum-safe digital signatures are available in preview in the Google Cloud Key Management Service.
“This can help customers perform quantum-safe key import and key exchange, encryption and decryption operations, and digital signature creation,” Google said on Friday.
The enhanced cryptographic capabilities will be vital to countering threats stemming from the harvest-now-decrypt-later adversary model, Google said, referring to large-scale exfiltration of encrypted data that a nation-state could later decrypt using quantum computing.
“Migrating to quantum-safe Digital Signature Algorithms today is essential for protection against future forgery and tampering, and is critical to enabling secure software updates in a world with cryptographically-relevant quantum computers,” Google said.
The signatures are based on algorithms cataloged as FIPS 204 and FIPS 205.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology formalized the algorithms in August 2024 amid “Q Day” fears that quantum computers could be activated before the global transition to quantum-resistant encryption is complete (see: US NIST Formalizes 3 Post-Quantum Algorithms).
Microsoft on Wedneday announced “Majorana 1,” a quantum chip the company says can outsmart supercomputers.Google launched a similar product called the Willow.