2025 to be a Breakout Year for Post-Quantum Digital Trust, Pushing PKI Vendors to Innovate

The prospect of post-quantum computational breakthroughs and transition to Quantum-resistant digital trust is revolutionizing Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) business models, compelling vendors to adapt their commercial strategies to accommodate post-quantum priorities while simultaneously producing growth, boosted revenue generation, and development opportunities for vendors in this space. ABI Research, a global technology intelligence firm, forecasts a 6% penetration rate for quantum-resistant PKI within the overall PKI market by 2030. While migration to post-quantum PKI is not expected to be explosive - given its dependency on resource pressures, upgrade cycles, vertical-specific requirements needs, and legacy system readiness - as supporting ecosystems catch up to accommodate post-quantum priorities, 2025 will be a critical year for vendors to begin their post-quantum journey.

“Migrating to quantum-secure PKI is an intimidating yet necessary next step within digital trust systems, with the push toward crypto-agility expected to permeate PKI business models at every stage of the development lifecycle,” explains Aisling Dawson, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. “Hybridized PKI offerings are stepping forward to meet the demand for backward-compatibility, crypto-inventory discovery tools and quantum readiness assessments provide opportunities for securing priority assets, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enhanced automation functionalities are on the rise in a bid to satisfy the need for dynamic algorithm-switching capabilities, data freshness, and accelerated certificate rotation periods.”

Leading digital trust vendors like SEALSQ, Keyfactor, Entrust, and AppViewX are adapting their business models to meet the prospective needs of post-quantum computing, integrating post-quantum cryptography into their PKI offerings, and extending their certificate management to encompass post-quantum and hybridized certificates. Further down the stack, prominent HSM vendors Crypto4A and Securosys emphasize the importance of full-stack quantum resilience and quantum-secure root of trust while the concretization of post-quantum PKI use cases, specifically within the financial services sector, show promise in protecting electronic communications via quantum-resistant PKI.

Yet, further evolution is required to combat the persisting technical barriers undercutting the uptake of post-quantum cryptography. “Interoperability and compatibility issues are expected to rear their heads at every juncture, demanding innovative solutions that are cognizant of the computational, scalability, and compatibility challenges of post-quantum migration,” says Dawson. As the 2030 CNSA deadline and predicted deprecation of ECC and RSA looms, cross-regional collaborative efforts should take center stage, both in continuing pilot operations and standardization efforts.

“While the NIST announcement of four official quantum-secure algorithms has catalyzed vendor activity in the digital trust space in 2024, it is important to remember those algorithms are unlikely to be a panacea for the ills of the post-quantum era. Thus, understanding and treating the post-quantum transition as a perpetual journey, peppered with continuous testing, rather than a checkbox exercise, is critical to optimizing the migration to a post-quantum world,” Dawson concludes.

These findings are from ABI Research’s PKI and Post-Quantum Business Models report. This report is part of the company’s Quantum Safe Technologies research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights.