In the world · Science · 13 August 2024

NIST and post-quantum cryptography: the 2024 standards

On 08/13/2024 NIST released FIPS 203, 204 and 205, the first final post-quantum cryptography standards. HQC followed in 2025 as a backup. What changes.

bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published 4 October 2026

On August 13, 2024, NIST, the United States standards institute, published the first three final post-quantum cryptography standards: FIPS 203, to protect key exchange, and FIPS 204 and 205, for digital signatures. These are algorithms that run on ordinary computers but were designed to resist attacks by quantum computers. In March 2025, the institute chose a fifth algorithm, HQC, as a backup. The official recommendation was blunt: begin migrating immediately.

What happened

The process began in 2016, with a public competition. According to IEEE Spectrum, NIST received 82 proposals from 25 countries, tested by cryptographers around the world for years. In 2024 the final standards came out:

FIPS 203 (ML-KEM): the primary standard for establishing keys, the foundation of general encryption.
FIPS 204 (ML-DSA): the primary standard for digital signatures.
FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA): a backup signature method, based on different mathematics.

In the announcement, mathematician Dustin Moody, who heads the project, urged system administrators to start integrating the standards immediately, because full integration takes time. NIST Director Laurie Locascio called the standards the culmination of the institute's effort to protect confidential electronic information.

On March 11, 2025, NIST announced HQC as a backup to ML-KEM. The reason, in Moody's words, is to have a backup standard based on different mathematics in case the primary one someday proves vulnerable. The institute expected a draft HQC standard about a year later and the final version in 2027.

Why it matters

Much of the protection of the internet, of banks, of digital documents and of electronic signatures depends on public-key algorithms such as RSA and elliptic curves. They rest on mathematical problems that a large enough quantum computer could solve.

That computer does not exist yet. But there is a risk that already exists: someone can copy encrypted data today and store it to open when the machine arrives. Experts call this harvest now, decrypt later. For information that must stay secret for ten or twenty years, such as medical records, contracts and trade secrets, the problem starts now.

NIST's standards have become a reference for governments and companies worldwide. They turn an abstract concern into a concrete task, with a name and a number: replace the algorithms.

In Bairo's view

For Bairo, what NIST did in 2024 is an example of preparation made before the crisis. No one waited for the quantum computer to arrive before acting. The scientific community saw the risk on paper, just as van de Hulst saw the hydrogen line in 1944, and worked for years to have the answer ready before it was needed.

That is the benefit he proposes with qrqbits: a post-quantum vault so that each person's files, images, audio and texts stay protected even when quantum computers mature. How qrqbits does this internally is not public. What it promises is the result: what is intimate stays intimate.

Bairo makes a point of keeping the words apart. Post-quantum is mathematical cryptography, not quantum technology. The 1420, which names the project he founded, is not a device either: it is a symbol of silence and listening, measured by the 21 cm yardstick. No one transmits on 1420 MHz.

Where this meets the ecosystem

qrqbits is the protection layer Bairo proposes for the other fronts. At Xperienc, the proposal is for health records to stay in the user's dashboard, protected by this layer. At CEASA Bank, the agribusiness financial platform, the planned digital vault keeps growers' contracts and invoices. In both, the aim is for today's data to remain protected twenty years from now.

Sources

NIST, first three finalized post-quantum encryption standards, 08/13/2024.
NIST, FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), 08/13/2024.
NIST, HQC selected as fifth algorithm, 03/11/2025.
IEEE Spectrum, NIST announces post-quantum cryptography standards, 08/13/2024.