In August 2025, the IETF PQUIP Working Group published revision 14 of draft-ietf-pquip-pqc-engineers, an Internet-Draft titled “Post-Quantum Cryptography for Engineers.” The document provides an overview of the quantum threat landscape and the PQC algorithms selected by NIST, intended for engineers who need to understand the practical implications of migrating to post-quantum cryptography.
According to the draft, the transition to PQC differs from previous cryptographic migrations such as DES to AES or SHA-1 to SHA-2. While drop-in replacement may be possible in some cases, others will require protocol redesign to accommodate larger key sizes, ciphertexts, and signatures. The document categorizes NIST’s standardized PQC schemes into lattice-based, hash-based, and code-based families, and discusses hybrid key exchange approaches using Post-Quantum/Traditional (PQ/T) constructions.
Authored by Aritra Banerjee and Tirumaleswar Reddy of Nokia, Dimitrios Schoinianakis of Nokia Bell Labs, and Timothy Hollebeek of DigiCert, the draft recommends that organizations begin with hybrid key exchange deployments to gain operational experience before undertaking the more complex migration of digital signatures. PQUIP also maintains a companion tracker listing the state of PQC-related work across all IETF security protocols.