How Samsung prepares devices sold today for a life in the post-quantum era

In this video blog, Madjid Nakhjiri, Senior Principal Security Architect at the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center, describes his company’s strategy to develop products today which are prepared for the post quantum era.

At first glance, this sounds like a catch 22 situation. Researchers are far from being ready with quantum-proof algorithms. In fact NIST just published its first semi-final list of promising algorithms, but their applicability still needs to be validated. Also, the implications of making existing infrastructures and systems run on the new algorithms still need to be tested. Last but not least, all needs to be embedded into standards and implementation guidelines. But with the advent of the quantum-era expected somewhere in-between the next 5 to 20 years, devices which are produced today will be potentially still in operation. Is there any way at all to prepare them for the post-quantum era?

Madjid Nakhjiri is positive and operates a clear strategy of getting Samsung’s devices post-quantum-prepared.

Today Samsung makes use of pre-quantum cryptography to protect all their connected devices from data-breach or third-party intrusion. The device keys are generated by HSMs and the certificates are signed by HSMs. The code signing infrastructure uses keys, manages the keys for ourselves as well as for our customers. HSMs play a very important role for Samsung’s key management services.

In the following video, Madjid explains how he gets prepared and why the strong involvement of the HSM provider is a central point in his strategy. And why he strongly pushes for standardization now.

Watch this video:  Why PQC and HSMs play a very important role for Samsung's Product Infrastructure #PartnersAreKey

Work with the PQC experts

We at Utimaco have the honor to work with some of the leading researchers in quantum cryptography, who use our Hardware Security Modules.

The ultimate goal is to prepare:

• the security infrastructure of the digital economy,
• algorithms and
• HSMs in unison for the post-quantum era.

Learn from the PQC experts

In the context of Utimaco’s Applied Crypto Symposium we had the chance to interview 3 of the leading researchers, and to dive into their views and research agenda on post-quantum cryptography.

... from the Institute of Quantum Computing

We started our with with Michele Mosca, co-founder and professor at the Institute of Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.

Michele firsts sketches out the playing field. Why do we actually push forward the development of quantum computers and what can we expect to be the major takeaways?