France to Stop Certifying Products Without Quantum-Safe Encryption in 2027
Regulations are being put in place by countries, but preparation by companies is lagging.
The French government reportedly will stop certifying cybersecurity products that don’t include post-quantum cryptography (PQC) starting in 2027, a recognition that quantum computing is coming into focus and that threat actors will soon be able to break modern encryption.
According to Reuters, Samih Souissi, chief of staff for ANSSI, France’s national cybersecurity agency, said while speaking at the France Quantum 2026 Summit this week in Paris that vendor products that come looking for ANSSI certification post-2027 will have to include quantum-safe cryptography.
The certification is required for products used by French government agencies and critical infrastructure organizations. Souissi said businesses in the country should buy only quantum-safe products by 2030.
The policy by the French government ranks among the most aggressive when it comes to PQC. For comparison, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2024 released the first three PQC algorithms that can be used by security product and services vendors. The agency has set 2030 as the year that legacy public-key encryption algorithms like RSA and ECDSA will be deprecated, and they will be completely disallowed by 2035.
The new policy put forth by ANSSI is an important step in protecting the country and the companies located there, with Souissi reportedly saying that “it’s not only a technical issue. It’s a matter of governance, industrial planning, regulation, and sovereignty.”
Quantum Is On Its Way
Quantum computing, which only a decade or more ago was considered a possibility, is now accelerating, with fault-tolerant, useful, and scalable systems expected by the early 2030s. They promise significant compute capabilities that will far surpass even today’s most powerful supercomputers, which run on bits that can be either a 0 or 1. Quantum systems run qubits, which can be 0, 1, or – in superposition – both simultaneously.
The pitch is that calculations that would take so-called “classical” supercomputers decades or more to complete will be able to be solved by quantum systems in days, hours, or minutes. Using algorithms such as Shor’s Algorithm, such systems could quickly break modern cryptography algorithms.
Q-Day Is Nearing
However, when the day comes that such computers are able to crack current encryption and digital signatures – referred to as Q-Day – is up for debate. Some in the tech field have put it somewhere between 2030 and 2035, though Google caused a stir in March when it predicted it will arrive in 2029.
While Q-Day is still at least more than two years away, the immediate threat is essentially lying in wait, with bad actors and nation-state threat groups adopting the “harvest now, decrypt later” approach of stealing encrypted data and keeping hold of it until the time when they can use quantum computing to break the encryption.
Money is being spent on PQC technology. Juniper Research analysts earlier this year predicted that the market for the technology will grow from $1.2 billion this year to $13 billion by 2035. However, there is concern that not enough organizations are prepared for the change, despite looming regulatory deadlines, cybercriminal threats, and the amount of work needed to put the new algorithms in place.
Preparation a Concern
According to a report by the Trusted Computing Group, 91% of security pros in the United States and Europe have no formal PQC roadmap ready. While 76% of the 1,500 security experts surveyed said they’re confident that they understand the threat, concerns over issues like compatibility, integration, and a complex migration are hobbling preparation.
The survey results prompted the organization’s president, Joe Pennisi, to say in a statement that PQC preparations need to be sped up, adding that as agencies like NIST – and now ANSSI – approve standards and set timelines, “it’s not enough for security professionals to just understand the quantum threat landscape, but actively take steps to mitigate it.”
‘Not a Single Switch You Flip’
Derran Guinan and Edwin Weijdema, both field CTOs for Veeam, wrote in a blog post this week that “post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is not about preparing for a quantum computer accessing your data center tomorrow. It is about protecting long-lived data from adversaries who can capture it today and wait for the technology to decrypt it later. … Quantum readiness is not a single switch you flip. It is a discipline you build.”
While France’s ANSSI is putting deadlines in place to ensure PQC adoption, government officials are continuing to embrace and support the development of quantum computing in the country. French President Emmanuel Macron last month pledged $1.78 billion for the country’s quantum and semiconductor industries, $1.15 billion of which will go toward quantum computing.
In addition, as part of the $1.15 billion, the government said it is acquiring an 18-cat-qubit quantum system that will be integrated with the Joliot-Curie supercomputer at the TGCC high-performance computing center. User access is expected in 2027.
