Cryptographic algorithms change, evolve, are retired. This is nothing new, but still we are not good in swapping an old, weak or deprecated algorithm for a new one. There are many issues that make this quite complex, like

• algorithms can be implemented in hardware for performance, substituting them with software implementations can notably degrade the performance of the system, and new hardware implementation can take years to implement and require changing many hardware components
• new algorithms have different software interfaces which can require that all programs using them have to be updated accordingly.

Experience of the last 30 years shows us that it can take many years to change to new cryptographic algorithms: from DES to AES, from MD4 and MD5 to SHA-0, SHA-1, SHA-2 and SHA-3. To make things even more complicated, long term sensitive information must be kept securely encrypted for many years, which requires using algorithms which will remain effective for the same time span, whereas digital signatures must be re-applied with the new and stronger algorithms before the old ones are deprecated.

To all this, we can add the threat of Quantum Computers which, in case they will become really operational, will be able to break practically all current asymmetric algorithms (eg. RSA). Do we need to change all asymmetric algorithms with the new Post Quantum Cryptographic algorithms as soon as these will be available? And how long will this take? What if one of these new PQC algorithms, which are based on new types of math, will be broken short time after its deployment?

So we need to vastly improve the “agility” of swapping from old to new cryptographic algorithms and to be proactive in doing it. This requires designing new interfaces and processes which will easily allow to swap one cryptographic algorithm for a new one.