France to Mandate Quantum-Resistant Encryption for Security Certifications

France’s national cybersecurity agency ANSSI said Tuesday that it will stop certifying security products that lack quantum-resistant encryption, reflecting growing concern among governments about quantum threats to cryptography.

ANSSI chief of staff Samih Souissi said at the France Quantum 2026 Summit that it would halt such certifications in 2027 and that businesses should buy only quantum-safe products by 2030, Reuters reported.

“ANSSI has been telegraphing this move for years,” Marin Ivezic, the founder of consulting firm Applied Quantum, said in a post on LinkedIn. “What changed yesterday is that ANSSI’s chief of staff said it publicly at a major conference, in front of the French quantum ecosystem, with Reuters in the room. The guidance became a commitment.”

ANSSI certification is a prerequisite for use across French government agencies and critical infrastructure operators. The move would force vendors to demonstrate post-quantum cryptography capability by 2027 or lose access to government contracts.

“It’s not only a technical issue,” Souissi said. “It’s a matter of ​governance, industrial planning, regulation, and sovereignty.”

ANSSI Chief of Staff Samih Souissi speaking at Orange OpenTech 2025 Source: YouTube

France’s 2027 cutoff aligns with a move from the US National Security Agency (NSA) to require all national security systems to use its suite of quantum-resistant algorithms, known as CNSA 2.0, by 2027.

Under CNSA 2.0, all new national security system acquisitions are required to support the approved algorithms by Jan. 1, 2027. Noncompliant systems must be phased out by the end of 2030, and by the end of 2031, all national security systems must use CNSA 2.0 algorithms.

“Two of the world’s most demanding cryptographic certification authorities, serving two of the world’s largest defense and government technology markets, have independently converged on the same year to make PQC [post-quantum cryptography] a pass-fail requirement,” Ivezic said.

Crypto grapples with quantum threat

Quantum threats to cryptography has also been a growing concern within the cryptocurrency industry.

In May, data analytics platform Glassnode estimated that nearly 10% of the total supply of Bitcoin (BTC), around 1.92 million BTC, is considered “structurally unsafe” in the event of a quantum computing breakthrough.

Related: Researchers say quantum computers could, in theory, be ready by 2030

In April, Coinbase warned that proof-of-stake blockchains, including Ethereum and Solana, may be at greater risk from quantum computing because of the signature schemes validators use to secure the network.

However, Coinbase also acknowledged that many blockchains have already begun work to harden their systems against quantum threats.

Coinbase said layer-1 blockchain Algorand has a “staged roadmap toward full quantum readiness” and is among the first networks to have deployed cryptography designed to be secure against quantum computers.

It also said Aptos, a competing layer-1 blockchain, was “well-positioned for the transition to post-quantum secure transactions.”

Solana and Ethereum have also created clear roadmaps to address quantum threats, including upgrading signatures to be quantum-resistant.