Cloudflare announces that the company is offering its customers free post-quantum crypto by default to protect their websites, APIs, cloud tools, and remote workers from future threats.

The announcement came ahead of the 2023 Summit for Democracy and aims to support a more resilient internet. As part of the new offering, Cloudflare also confirms that it will publish vendor-neutral roadmaps based on the standards set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

It is expected that in a few years future quantum computers will be able to perform complex calculations exponentially faster than today’s machines. It is predicted that within a few years, these quantum computers will be sufficiently advanced to be able to decrypt much of the encrypted data on the Internet. Cloudflare aims to address this issue with its new free offering.

Post-quantum protection is essential to national security

According to a national security memorandum signed by US President Joe Biden last May, government agencies must prepare for quantum computers that could break encryption in the future. Companies are also advised to prepare for this technological development.

While SiliconANGLE believes that quantum computing will be able to crack crypto, it will likely be some time yet, but it is important for companies to be aware that that day is slowly approaching.

Over 1 billion HTTP requests protected with post-quantum cryptography

Cloudflare has been developing standards for post-quantum cryptography since 2018 and has been making the technology available to interested customers as a beta test since 2022.

The company claims to be responsible for more than 99% of websites already using NIST-approved post-quantum cryptography for their connections. Cloudflare also states that since 2019, more than 1 billion HTTP requests have been protected thanks to the company’s post-quantum cryptography.