Quantum Webinar Series
This Quantum Series guides participants from foundational quantum concepts through practical implementation of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and enterprise migration strategies. Each session builds progressively from theory to deployment, enabling organizations to understand, test, and adopt quantum-resistant technologies.
PQC and OpenSSL: Practical Integration and Deployment
OpenSSL plays a central role in securing internet communications, making it a critical platform for integrating PQC into real-world systems. As PQC algorithms move toward standardization, support for hybrid and quantum-resistant key exchange and signatures is emerging within OpenSSL and related libraries.
This session explores how PQC is being incorporated into OpenSSL, including provider-based architectures, integration with external libraries such as liboqs, and support for hybrid TLS handshakes.
Attendees will gain practical insight into configuring and testing PQC-enabled OpenSSL environments, including enabling new cipher suites, experimenting with hybrid key exchange groups, and evaluating performance impacts. The session also addresses interoperability, backward compatibility, and deployment challenges.
Rich Salz is a highly respected Internet security architect, software engineer, and standards contributor with decades of experience in applied cryptography, secure communications, and large-scale Internet infrastructure. He has held senior technical roles at Akamai Technologies, IBM, and DataPower, where he helped design and implement security products used across enterprise and Internet environments. Rich is widely recognized for his long-standing contributions to OpenSSL, one of the world's most widely deployed cryptographic libraries, and has played an important role in advancing secure protocol implementations and operational security practices.
In addition to his industry work, Rich has been an active leader within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), contributing to the development and deployment of Internet security standards for more than two decades. He has participated extensively in the TLS community, served as co-chair of the ACME Working Group (the protocol behind Let's Encrypt), and has contributed to numerous RFCs and security reviews. Known for bridging standards development with real-world implementation, he brings deep expertise in cryptography, Internet protocols, and the operational challenges of deploying security technologies at Internet scale.
Transitioning to Quantum-Safe cryptography
This talk will give an overview of post-quantum encryption and digital signature primitives recently standardized by NIST to which a lot of governments and organizations are currently transitioning. The session will also give a brief description of additional algorithms that are currently in the pipeline at NIST and talk about what kind of challenges one faces when trying to migrate more complex protocols to quantum-safe.
Dr. Vadim Lyubashevsky is a Principal Research Scientist and manager of the Foundational Cryptography group at IBM Research in Zurich, where he has worked since 2015. Prior to this, he was a researcher in the cryptography group at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and before that, a post doc in the Foundations of Computing group at Tel Aviv University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2008.
His main research focus is on designing efficient quantum-safe cryptographic protocols based on the hardness of lattice problems. He has worked on the foundations of practical lattice encryption, digital signatures, and is currently interested in zero knowledge proofs and real-world privacy preserving primitives. A lot of his research has been funded by the ERC (European Research Commission) starting and consolidator grants, and some past works have received IACR Test-of-Time awards at Asiacrypt 2024 and Eurocrypt 2025. He co-led the CRYSTALS team which produced the CRYSTALS-Kyber (ML-KEM) and the CRYSTALS-Dilithium (ML-DSA) NIST standards for post-quantum encryption and digital signatures.
How Quantum Computing Will Break Today’s Encryption & What is PQC?
Modern digital security depends on cryptographic systems like RSA and elliptic curve cryptography, which rely on the computational difficulty of problems such as integer factorization and discrete logarithms. Quantum computers fundamentally change this equation. Algorithms like Shor’s algorithm could enable sufficiently powerful quantum machines to break these widely used encryption schemes, putting sensitive data, communications, and critical infrastructure at risk. Even before large-scale quantum computers exist, the “harvest now, decrypt later” threat is already driving urgency across governments and industries.
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is the response to this challenge. PQC refers to new cryptographic algorithms designed to be secure against both classical and quantum attacks, while remaining deployable on today’s systems. Standardization efforts led by organizations such as NIST and the IETF are shaping how these algorithms are adopted in real-world protocols. In particular, hybrid approaches—such as hybrid TLS that combine classical encryption with PQC algorithms—are emerging as a practical transition strategy, enabling organizations to deploy quantum-resistant protections without sacrificing compatibility.
Speaker: Nalini Elkins is a Trustee of the Industry Network Technology Council. She is also the CTO and co-founder of Outside the Stacks, Inc. Nalini is a recognized leader in the field of computer performance measurement and analysis. In addition to being an experienced software product designer, developer, and planner, she is a formidable businesswoman. She has been the founder or co-founder of three start-ups in the high-tech arena. Nalini started her career doing network design and monitoring for the Chevron network. She specializes in network performance analysis, measurement, monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting of large enterprise networks. One of her specialties is training and network design for IPv6 migration for large enterprise.
Quantum 101: QKD, Entanglement, Sensors, and the Need for Standards
At the heart of quantum technology are principles that challenge classical intuition, including superposition and entanglement. Quantum key distribution (QKD) leverages these properties to enable theoretically secure communication, where any attempt at eavesdropping can be detected. Entanglement—the phenomenon in which particles remain correlated across distance—underpins not only QKD but also future quantum networks and distributed computing architectures.
Beyond communication, quantum sensing is emerging as one of the most mature and transformative applications. Quantum sensors have the potential to redefine navigation by reducing or even eliminating reliance on GPS, enabling precise positioning in environments where satellite signals are unavailable or unreliable. Looking further ahead, quantum technologies could support entirely new infrastructure paradigms, including the possibility of data centers in space, where quantum communication links and ultra-secure networks operate beyond terrestrial constraints.
As these capabilities evolve, the need for interoperability, security, and performance standards becomes critical, requiring coordination across industries and international bodies to ensure scalable and trusted quantum ecosystems.
Dr. Bruno Avritzer is the quantum theory lead at Leidos and the vice-chair of the QED-C Standards and Performance Metrics technical advisory committee, and specializes in the theory of quantum communications and networked quantum devices, ranging from secure quantum communications to distributed quantum computing.