Topic starter
12/06/2026 9:34 pm
TL;DR: Quantum-safe migration is being blocked less by algorithm choice than by the inability to inventory where vulnerable cryptography lives across identities, applications, and infrastructure, according to Axiad’s analysis of Gartner, CISA, and NIST guidance. The decisive issue is visibility: organisations cannot plan PQC transition until they can map certificates, keys, and dependencies end to end.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Axiad: “Experts Say Quantum Will Break Today’s Encryption by 2029”.
Key questions
Q: How should security teams start a PQC readiness programme?
A: Start with cryptographic inventory, not with algorithm selection.
Q: When should organisations prioritise one cryptographic dependency over another in a PQC migration?
A: Organisations should prioritise cryptographic dependencies by combining technical severity with business exposure, operational criticality, and dependency weight.
Q: What are the signs that PQC readiness is failing in practice?
A: The main warning signs are incomplete inventories, unknown certificate owners, untracked renewal dates, hard-coded algorithms and discovery tools that only cover one layer of the stack.
Practitioner guidance
- Build a cryptographic inventory across identity estates Catalogue certificates, keys, algorithms, lifecycles and dependencies across PKI, identity platforms, applications, endpoints and cloud services.
- Map cryptographic objects to identity ownership Tie each certificate, API key, SSH key and trust chain to a user, service, workload or application owner so remediation has a clear accountability path.
- Prioritise quantum-vulnerable dependencies first Rank RSA, ECC and other vulnerable implementations by identity criticality, data sensitivity, renewal timing and business service impact.
Bottom line: The article’s central point is that PQC migration is blocked by discovery gaps, not by a lack of concern about the quantum threat.
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12/06/2026 11:44 pm
Cryptographic inventory is the governing control that turns PQC from a theory problem into a migration programme. The article is right to place discovery ahead of substitution because enterprises cannot prioritise what they cannot enumerate. That makes inventory the baseline control for both cryptographic risk and identity-linked trust chains. Practitioners should treat discovery completeness as the first measure of readiness.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should organisations do when quantum migration timelines shorten?
A: They should accelerate discovery, prioritisation and governance before they attempt mass substitution. The practical response is to identify critical identities, map vulnerable cryptography to those services, and align migration sequencing to risk and business dependency rather than to asset count alone.
👉 Read our full editorial: Post-quantum cryptography readiness depends on cryptographic inventory