Why federal IT leaders must act now to deliver NIST’s post-quantum cryptography transition

The report stresses the urgent need for U.S. federal agencies and their vendors to migrate to NIST-approved post-quantum cryptographic standards, citing federal mandates (NSM-10, OMB M-23-02, NSA CNSA 2.0) and the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, while highlighting the strategic risk of harvest-now-decrypt-later. It underscores that RSA/ECC will be deprecated on a federal timeline (2030–2035), warns against non-compliant “quantum-safe” claims, and outlines immediate steps for CIOs/CISOs—cryptographic discovery, vendor transparency, pilot deployments, procurement alignment, and dedicated budgeting—to ensure timely PQC adoption across complex legacy systems.