The Evolving Landscape of Encryption: From AES to PQC

Encryption: An Essential Tool in Digital World

Data safety: Encryption converts data into a coded form for protection, with an estimated 80% global usage rate amid rising online activities.

Coding varieties: With evolving technology, symmetric encryption, where the same key locks and unlocks the data, is predominantly used.

The Most Secure Symmetric Encryption: AES

The standard: The U.S. government-developed AES replaced the outdated DES and has remained the federal standard since 2001, underlining the importance of progressing with encryption technologies.

AES Under Quantum Threat and The Rise of PQC

Quantum threat: Upcoming quantum computing applications could put AES at risk as they have the ability to crack AES encryption faster, making data more vulnerable.

The future of encryption: The threat led NIST to embark on developing a post-quantum cryptography (PQC). NIST aims to announce the new PQC standard, which will replace AES and offer resilience against quantum computers, by 2022.