Quantifying quantum risk: a measure of crypto agility

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 15 Jun 2026] Quantifying quantum risk: a measure of crypto agility Coryan Wilson-Shah Because of their ability to enable new forms of cryptanalysis, quantum computers pose a threat to the cryptographic algorithms that are widely used to secure contemporary computer systems. A practical quantum computer may emerge within the next ten years or so, but due to theorised "harvest now, decrypt later" style attacker behaviour, mitigations are necessary today. Recent advances in cryptography and security architecture show promise in supporting the design of systems that exhibit resilience against quantum-enabled cryptanalysis, however there is a key gap in the literature around the subject of deriving tolerances for such systems. In this paper, we introduce the concept of rotation time as a measure of crypto agility, and derive an approximation that links rotation time tolerance to security risk tolerance. Historical CVE data is used to calculate illustrative values for rotation time tolerance, which is found to be of the order of hours to days. This demonstrates that using crypto agility in conjunction with hybrid encryption is an effective approach for designing quantum-resilient systems, but may necessitate challenging technical and operational tolerances in order to meet organisational risk tolerances. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2606.17116 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2606.17116v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.17116 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Coryan Wilson-Shah [view email] [v1] Mon, 15 Jun 2026 10:12:06 UTC (919 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)