Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration for Enterprise Security
Large-scale quantum computers threaten the public-key cryptography that protects enterprise data, communications, and digital identity. Shor's algorithm solves integer factorization and discrete logarithms in polynomial time, which would break RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic-curve schemes once a cryptographically relevant quantum computer exists. The danger is not only future. Adversaries can record encrypted traffic today and decrypt it later, a tactic known as harvest-now-decrypt-later. In August 2024 the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology published its first post-quantum standards: FIPS 203 (ML-KEM, derived from CRYSTALS-Kyber), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA, from CRYSTALS-Dilithium), and FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA, from SPHINCS+). This paper presents a practical migration framework for enterprises. It reviews the quantum threat and Mosca's inequality for timing the transition, summarizes the new standards with their key and signature sizes, and proposes a five-phase roadmap built on crypto-agility: discovery and inventory, risk prioritization, agility engineering, hybrid deployment, and validation. Performance trade-offs are analyzed using documented parameter sizes and illustrative TLS handshake figures. ML-KEM-768 carries a 1,184-byte public key against 64 bytes for an elliptic-curve key, while SPHINCS+ signatures can exceed 17 kilobytes. The work does not report a real deployment. It consolidates published parameters and field guidance into an actionable plan, and it highlights open challenges in certificate sizing, hardware support, and long-lived embedded systems.