Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC): A Revenue Assessment

This report is a guide to the business opportunities that can be provided by Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in the coming decade. Last year Google announced its breaking news of achieving quantum supremacy and in the coming months, NIST will be finalizing Round 2 of its algorithm standardization process. As awareness of the growing Quantum Computing threat increases and the standards for PQC algorithms solidify, the author expects a boom in revenue for this technology in the next few years.

For now, PQC finds its markets in critical long-lived data such as plans for aircraft and medical databases that need to survive well into the era of powerful quantum computers. However, encryption is hidden everywhere in both hardware and software – from IoT devices to web browsers – so the addressable market for PQC can be measured in billions of units.

Coverage of this report includes:

• Ten-year forecasts of the PQC market with breakouts by government, military and intelligence services, telecommunications, IoT, financial services, healthcare/medical records, general business applications, disaster recovery, and consumer Web browsers.
• Analysis of end-user groups and perspectives. Organizations vary highly in their adoption rates for new technologies and their requirements for the exact form of PQC solution. This variety defines when each group should become concerned with potential security issues and when it will begin generating revenue.
• Analysis of the new PQC standards emerging from NIST, the IETF and a slew of other influencers such as ETSI, the Cloud Security Alliance, and ITU-T. The report discusses how these standards will help shape the PQC market along with key standards-related issues such as the potential for pure post-quantum cryptography vs. hybrid classical/quantum approaches and PQC vs. quantum physics-based Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).
• Strategic profiles of leading commercial firms active in the PQC space. These profiles include giants such as Infineon, IBM, Google, and Microsoft, along with interesting startups such as Isara. These profiles are designed to provide the reader of this report with an understanding of how the major players are creating PQC products and building marketing strategies for PQC as quantum computers become more ubiquitous.