NIST Official Says Current Encryption Algorithms Still Strong

(Gen.com) There’s no near-term danger that modern tools will be able break current encryption methods, according to Matthew Scholl, chief of the Computer Science Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST is currently working on a number of initiatives to develop more-modern cryptographic algorithms – ones that resist codebreaking efforts from quantum computers as well as new standards for smaller “lightweight” and internet-of-things devices.
“I want to assure people that the step from Google’s announcement of quantum supremacy to having a quantum machine that is cryptographically relevant — meaning something that will actually be able to break our current public-key infrastructure — is really a significantly wide gap,” Scholl told members at a recent Information Security Privacy Advisory Board meeting.
“We still feel quite confidently — not just NIST but the global community that we’re working with — that the timeline that we’re on for developing and deploying quantum-resistant encryption standards is still relevant,” he said. “So we’re still looking at 2022 to 2024 for having those standards complete.”