The importance of Post-Quantum Cryptography for eID documents Quantum computing is, for most, still a technology that’s out of reach. Restricted to a handful of commercial research labs and universities around the world, they are not yet a mainstream prospect. But with these computers expected to become a more accessible tool by the early 2030s, they pose several risks to electronic identity documents as we currently use them today. Cryptography is what allows us to protect sensitive data and communications and is foundational to how our modern world works. The power of quantum computing, deployed in a brute force manner, means that the resilience of many of the algorithms we’ve used for decades to protect data is now under question. Current mechanisms used for authentication, digital signatures and trust chains in identity documents are particularly vulnerable because they rely on asymmetric cryptography like RSA and ECC. Also known as public key cryptography, these mechanisms work by creating a pair of keys - one public and one private. Anyone can use a public key to encrypt data, but only the holders of the corresponding private key can decrypt that data. Although slower and more resource intensive than their symmetric equivalents, asymmetric approaches are used when security is paramount, such as securing communications within an open system, or encrypting sensitive data. | Rising fraud threat and trust erosion For governments designing, deploying and managing electronic identity schemes, the prospect of the encryption it relies on being broken is a huge challenge to the trust these systems depend on. Threat actors could use it to break government signature keys, and forge valid false electronic citizen profiles. They could also break ID authentication keys and access confidential data stored in the identity documents. From there, they can steal identities or forge digital signatures to