By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews
The clock on post-quantum encryption runs out in 2030. Commercial companies are moving faster than the government to meet it.
On the government side, “we’re somewhat bound by the NSA Type 1 encryption standards,” Lt. Col. Vinny Pande, materiel leader and deputy director at SpaceWERX, said Thursday on the MilSat Symposium panel “Attack at Machine Speed: Cyber, AI, and the Counterspace Threat” at Silicon Valley Space Week. “The problem is we don’t quite have the mandate on the Space Force side to put money behind it because we have to trust the NSA and the intelligence community.”
SpaceWERX, which describes itself as the Space Force’s in-house venture arm, puts about $500 million to $700 million a year of non-dilutive capital into startups, he said.
Start now, not in 2030
Moderator Paul Struhsaker of Arrasar Partners framed the problem: quantum computing will make the cryptographic keys in use today obsolete, and federal agencies have been told to move to post-quantum keys by 2030.
Panelists said waiting for the deadline is already too late for satellites. Spacecraft fly for many years, the new NIST post-quantum standards are already out, and data encrypted at rest is likely already in adversaries’ hands, waiting for a quantum computer to break it. Security measures “have to be implemented today, not in 2030,” said David Gelerman, president and CEO of SpaceBridge, starting with post-quantum key exchange and authentication.
Sanket Kamble, co-founder and CTO of threat-simulation company OrbitSec, warned that an attacker doesn’t have to compromise a satellite’s AI to destroy the mission.
The panel also included Chris Badgett of Kratos, Brendan Harris of Dell Technologies Federal, Jeremy Hallett of Brindabella and Company, and Col. Jon Strizzi of Space Systems Command’s Space Systems Integration Office.
