Hierophant is designed from the ground up to be Post-Quantum Safe, addressing the significant and emerging threats posed by quantum computing to current cryptographic standards. The advent of powerful quantum computers will render many widely used encryption algorithms obsolete, making data protected by them vulnerable.
This is particularly concerning due to the "harvest now, decrypt later" attack vector, where adversaries collect encrypted data today with the intent of decrypting it once sufficiently powerful quantum computers become available.
For organizations handling sensitive, long-lived data—such as government secrets, intellectual property, or critical infrastructure details—transitioning to PQC is becoming a critical compliance and security imperative to consider. Protocol Hierophant ensures that data secured today remains protected against these future advanced cryptanalytic capabilities, safeguarding sensitive information for the long term.
Hierophant’s resilience against quantum attacks is not an adaptation or a future plan; it is an integral part of its core design. The protocol incorporates standardized Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms, including Kyber, which has been selected by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as an algorithm for key encapsulation, specifically developed to resist attacks from both classical and quantum computers.
These advanced PQC algorithms, like Kyber, are paired with well-established, symmetric encryption standards, such as AES. This hybrid cryptographic approach combines the strengths of quantum-resistant public-key algorithms with the proven security and efficiency of traditional symmetric ciphers, being a core of Protocol Hierophant.