Quantifying quantum risk: a measure of crypto agility

Abstract: Because of their ability to enable new forms of cryptanalysis, quantum computers pose a threat to the cryptographic algorithms that are widely used to secure contemporary computer systems. A practical quantum computer may emerge within the next ten years or so, but due to theorised "harvest now, decrypt later" style attacker behaviour, mitigations are necessary today. Recent advances in cryptography and security architecture show promise in supporting the design of systems that exhibit resilience against quantum-enabled cryptanalysis, however there is a key gap in the literature around the subject of deriving tolerances for such systems. In this paper, we introduce the concept of rotation time as a measure of crypto agility, and derive an approximation that links rotation time tolerance to security risk tolerance. Historical CVE data is used to calculate illustrative values for rotation time tolerance, which is found to be of the order of hours to days. This demonstrates that using crypto agility in conjunction with hybrid encryption is an effective approach for designing quantum-resilient systems, but may necessitate challenging technical and operational tolerances in order to meet organisational risk tolerances.