Category

Cryptographic engineering

Designing, reviewing and migrating the cryptography, key management and certificate systems a product depends on.

Cryptography rarely fails because a primitive was broken. It fails because a key lived somewhere nobody intended, a certificate expired on a weekend, an algorithm choice was hard-coded across a dozen services, or nobody could say which systems used which construction. This category covers applied cryptographic architecture, key management, PKI and hardware security modules, cryptographic inventory and agility, and the readiness and migration work that the move to post-quantum standards now requires. The emphasis is on the surrounding engineering—where keys live, who can use them, how an algorithm is replaced, and what the product does when any of that changes.

Published in this category

Cryptographic engineering7 MIN READ

Cryptographic agility is an interface problem

Agility is not a property of the algorithms you chose. It is a property of how your code, your data formats and your protocols name them—and whether anything can change without a coordinated rewrite.

Cryptographic engineering6 MIN READ

You cannot migrate cryptography you cannot find

Every post-quantum migration plan begins with an inventory, and most inventories stall because the team looks for algorithms instead of looking for the places algorithms are decided.

Cryptographic engineering7 MIN READ

Cryptography is an architecture decision, not a library choice

Choosing a well-regarded library settles very little. The decisions that determine whether cryptography protects anything are about where keys live, what a compromise reaches, and which threat you are actually addressing.

Cryptographic engineering6 MIN READ

What belongs in a post-quantum migration plan?

A plan that lists algorithms and a target year is a statement of intent. A plan that survives review names sequenced workstreams, dependency owners, interim states and the decisions that are already overdue.

Cryptographic engineering6 MIN READ

Encryption at rest answers fewer questions than you think

Platform-managed encryption satisfies a procurement question and defends against one threat. Knowing which threat it covers—and which of your actual risks it leaves untouched—changes what you build next.

Cryptographic engineering7 MIN READ

Where do your keys actually live?

Most organisations can describe their intended key management and cannot answer the question for a specific key. The gap between the two is where incidents and failed audits come from.

Cryptographic engineering6 MIN READ

Hybrid key exchange: what it protects and what it costs

Combining a classical and a post-quantum key exchange is now the default for TLS. Understanding why the combination is used—and what it adds to every handshake—makes the deployment decision straightforward.

Cryptographic engineering6 MIN READ

Signatures are the harder half of the post-quantum migration

Key exchange migration is largely a configuration change. Signature migration runs into certificate sizes, fixed-width image headers, verifiers you cannot update and archives that must stay verifiable for decades.

Know what your agents will do before you let them do it.

Bring one agent workflow and the decision in front of you. Gaurav Tiwari replies personally within 1 working day.