The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will announce the Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms it plans to standardize, along with which algorithms move into the 4th round for further analysis, according to a forum email.
There are several organizations working on analysing PQC candidates (for example CACR in China) but most market stakeholders are focused on tracking efforts being pursued in the USA.
NIST is a USA research facility dedicated to setting regulations and analytical metrics for a large span of industrial instruments, particularly in measurements, communications, and security.
NIST began a 7-year program dedicated to determining qualified candidates for national standards in PQC, which is likely to become a reference when standards are implemented internationally. These protocols are referred to as quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms and are idealized to be near-perfect encryption in the post-quantum era.
Through two rounds of this evaluation process, NIST has selected 7 finalist candidates to compete for standardization at the end of this third round, and 8 alternate candidates for further study and to compete in a final fourth round for possible standardization.
The finalists are separated into two encryption technologies, Public-Key Encryption and Digital Signatures, and are subdivided into their mathematical encryption family below.
We will provide further coverage after the formal NIST press release.
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