Popular internet security firm Cloudflare is rolling out post-quantum encryption to its zero trust suite. These more advanced security algorithms are designed to withstand attacks from even more powerful quantum computers, which we have today and likely won’t have for decades.
Over 35 percent of the internet traffic going through Cloudflare is now post-quantum secure. The company has reportedly spent eight years developing its post-quantum encryption plans, but the focus on its zero-trust products comes from an increasing level of interest in better encryption technologies for corporate clients, as John Graham-Cummings, Cloudfare’s chief technology officer, told CyberScoop.
The company also claims in its announcement that “any visitor accessing a website protected by Cloudflare today benefits from post-quantum cryptography,” as long as they’re using a “major browser” like Chrome, Edge, or Firefox, with a small percentage of Safari mobile traffic also on its radar. Over one-third of human-generated web traffic flowing through Cloudflare enjoys enhanced protection. This number is expected to grow as more browsers and web clients start to support post-quantum cryptography protocols.
On the other hand, the zero trust suite helps protect an organisation’s internal tools and applications (both web and otherwise) with the same, stronger encryption. Companies can now route their “corporate network traffic” through Cloudflare’s zero trust platform and get significantly better digital security without having to individually update systems, connections, or applications—a process that saves time, money, and effort for any company that wants to be protected against quantum computers breaking down their defences.
That said, migrating to post-quantum security isn’t going to be easy. Cloudflare claims that several communications and key agreement protocols will require updating. The firm has made “significant progress” on the latter, using a lattice-based algorithm based on CRYSTALS-KYBER. The NSA uses this algorithm to protect national security systems and is also an approved post-quantum secure algorithm according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
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