Cryptographic agility

rdf:langString Cryptographic agility

rdf:langString Cryptographic agility (also referred to as crypto-agility) is a practice paradigm in designing information security protocols and standards in a way so that they can support multiple cryptographic primitives and algorithms at the same time. Then the systems implementing a particular standard can choose which combination of primitives they want to use. The primary goal of cryptographic agility was to enable rapid adaptations of new cryptographic primitives and algorithms without making disruptive changes to the systems' infrastructure. Cryptographic agility acts as a safety measure or an incident response mechanism when a cryptographic primitive of a system is discovered to be vulnerable. A security system is considered crypto agile if its cryptographic algorithms or parameters can be replaced with ease and is at least partly automated. The impending arrival of a quantum computer that can break existing asymmetric cryptography is raising awareness of the importance of cryptographic agility.