The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center has released a series of papers on the challenges and threats posed by quantum computing for the payment card industry along with frameworks for making card payment systems more resilient to the technology.
Quantum computers would theoretically be much more powerful than modern computers and could be used to crack many cryptography algorithms currently used to protect computer systems. The papers — produced by FS-ISAC’s Post Quantum Cryptography Working Group — concluded that more than 20 billion devices will need to be migrated to quantum-safe cryptography. The group developed three detailed use cases to offer insights into cryptographic assumptions, quantum’s impact, mitigation techniques and the current industry status of key payment card industry elements.
“It’s clearly necessary to safeguard those transactions from serious risks like quantum computing, which will undermine important cryptography that those billions of transactions depend on,” the working group said about the threat. “Moving the cryptographic infrastructure from its current algorithms to crypto-resilient algorithms is a significant piece of work and will require the participation of multiple stakeholders across the card payment infrastructure.”
