Post-quantum cryptography migration
Migrating to post-quantum–ready cryptography is a multi-year engineering program—not a single certificate rotation. Ontlia helps organizations execute with predictable risk: phased adoption, hybrid schemes where standards recommend them, testable rollback paths, and governance that keeps security, reliability, and velocity aligned.
We treat migration as a portfolio of changes across protocols, libraries, hardware security modules, PKI hierarchies, and application logic. Our engagements combine architecture leadership with hands-on integration patterns suited to regulated and uptime-sensitive environments.
Migration path
The following path is adapted per client; phases may overlap when parallel workstreams (e.g., PKI and edge TLS) reduce calendar time without increasing blast radius.
Phase 1 — Baseline & guardrails
Confirm crypto inventory accuracy, define success metrics (latency budgets, handshake failure rates, observability signals), and establish non-production environments that mirror negotiation paths and trust stores.
Phase 2 — Pilot domains
Introduce post-quantum or hybrid configurations in bounded scopes: internal APIs, non-customer-facing tiers, or isolated regions—with feature flags and canary releases tied to automated rollback.
Phase 3 — Platform rollouts
Coordinate upgrades across ingress controllers, service meshes, VPN concentrators, brokers, databases, and signing pipelines— sequencing dependency upgrades so older clients are not stranded inadvertently.
Phase 4 — Application & data-layer updates
Where protocols alone are insufficient, update encryption-at-rest schemes, sealed payloads, token formats, and custom protocols—with compatibility windows documented for consuming teams.
Phase 5 — PKI & identity renewal
Renew CA hierarchies, issuance policies, OCSP/CRL behaviors, and hardware-backed roots where applicable—aligned to procurement cycles for appliances and cloud KMS offerings.
Phase 6 — Validation & operational readiness
Formal verification against acceptance criteria: penetration-assisted negotiation testing, chaos drills for certificate expiry, runbooks for incident response, and evidence packs for compliance checkpoints.
Technical scope
Hybrid classical / post-quantum deployments
Design patterns that preserve interoperability during transition—balancing attack surface, performance, and client diversity across browsers, mobile SDKs, IoT, and partner integrations.
Libraries, languages & build pipelines
Upgrade paths for OpenSSL/BoringSSL-class stacks, JVM/JSEE configs, .NET crypto providers, Go/rust bindings, and CI artifact signing—including reproducible builds where policy requires.
Key management & HSM/KMS integration
Operational patterns for key generation, rotation, backing materials, and dual-stack issuance—coordinated with cloud provider roadmaps and on-premises hardware lifecycles.
Performance & capacity planning
Handshake size and CPU implications assessed early; load-test protocols extended to capture worst-case negotiation matrices before broad rollout.
Validation & governance
Change advisory & communications
Stakeholder rhythm across security architecture, SRE, application owners, and vendors—with explicit decision logs on algorithm choices and deprecation timelines.
Evidence & audit readiness
Documentation structured for internal audit and external scrutiny: configuration baselines, exception registers, test artifacts, and mapping from controls to deployed state.
Operational monitoring
Dashboards and alerts for handshake anomalies, certificate mismatches, and client fallback patterns—reducing surprise during phased enforcement.
Organizations typically pair migration execution with an assessment or refreshed baseline so priorities stay anchored to measured exposure—not assumptions from prior years.
PQC assessment · Business application services · All services