Firewall Vendors Rolling out PQC Support Signals Network Security Market on Track for Ecosystem Migration

On August 14, Palo Alto Networks announced Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) support for its latest Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) Operating System (OS), the PAN-OS 12.1 Orion, which is available for the current (4th) generation of firewalls, as well as the new (5th) generation PA-5500 series. This includes support for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards Federal Information Processing System (FIPS) 203 (Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM)), FIPS 204 (Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signal Algorithm (ML-DSA)) and FIPS 205 (Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signal Algorithm (SLH-DSA)), as well as a number of other candidate algorithms (HQC, Classic McEliece, BIKE, Frodo).

While it is not clear if the FIPS standard algorithms are Automated Cryptographic Validation Protocol (ACVP) certified, the suite of supported PQC algorithms is the most extensive on offer in the network security market to date. Fortinet announced support earlier this year for ML-KEM and HQC in its FortiOS 7.6 (with some others in pilot), while others (Check Point, Versa Networks, Akamai) offer Kyber variations. Palo Alto Networks support goes beyond even NIST candidate algorithms (including Frodo, Classic McEliece and BIKE). These are likely to be standardized in Europe (ETSI and by select individual countries) and by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), meaning Palo Alto Networks is aligning itself with the various regional differences that are emerging in the PQC space.

Support for PQC algorithms in firewalls and other network security tools is an important first step for end users such as enterprises to start planning their transition. Having deadlines for PQC migration is all well and good, but it requires products to be available on the commercial market for organizations to start upgrading their security tools. Firewalls are some of the most widespread and mature technologies in the cybersecurity space, often forming the foundation of most enterprise security. Their ability to integrate PQC algorithms will be critical in underpinning a successful PQC transition.

Software upgrades are the easiest to implement first; clients can use OS upgrades to test the algorithms and see how they can be leveraged within their operating environment; these first steps are also key to helping enterprises plan their migration and identify areas they need to focus on, especially if there are issues. PQC is not just new, but also highly complex, and vendor support will be key here to ensuring clients can do some internal testing to familiarize themselves with the new algorithms, their protocol, and application implementations (Virtual Private Network (VPN), Internet Protocol Security (IPsec), Transport Layer Security (TLS), etc.).  This will make eventual hardware upgrades easier as a result, and smoothing this transition will be important for vendors, as new hardware will be inevitable. PQC workloads require significant hardware acceleration, with more compute and memory requirements—this will make hardware upgrades expensive. Palo Alto Networks announced the use of the FE400 Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) with up to 256 cores for the PA-5500 series, a significant upgrade in comparison to the top-line 4th generation NGFW PA-5440 and 5445 series, which have about 64 cores. It is, therefore, crucial for a first user interaction on the software side with the user’s current NGFWs to help facilitate the transition and troubleshoot any eventual integration and usability issues; this will make the investment in new hardware more palatable.

For network security vendors, the integration of PQC algorithms is no easy feat. While software updates to existing hardware is a good first step, all will eventually need to adapt their next generation of appliances to the intense demands of PQC, as Palo Alto Networks has done with its PA-5500 series. Vendors will need to expend significantly on developing a suitable, and likely highly customized, PQC software library that can provide deep integration and hardware optimization with its product line. PQC will prove to be a steep learning curve, even for large players, and implementing such algorithms not only correctly and in a secure manner, but also in a way that provides high performance will be extremely challenging. Vendors should look at obtaining the help of specialized PQC Intellectual Property (IP)/library providers to help them optimize and adapt the selected algorithms to their products. In particular, vendors should keep in mind that they need to be crypto-agile. The PQC algorithms are new, and largely untested in the wild, and some are likely to be broken. Beyond that, different end users in different sectors and regions may prefer different algorithms. Consequently, vendors should build in the ability to easily swap out or replace algorithms based on usage; and this will be particularly important for appliances out in the field through software updates.