Australia Canada post-quantum cryptography deadline

The Australia and Canada post-quantum cryptography deadlines are the dates when each country’s national cyber agency expects quantum-vulnerable public-key algorithms (RSA, Diffie-Hellman, ECDH, ECDSA) to be replaced. Australia’s target is the end of 2030. Canada uses a staged roadmap: high-priority systems by the end of 2031 and everything else by the end of 2035.

For organisations that run operational technology (OT) and critical infrastructure, these dates matter most for the connections that leave a site: links between substations or plants, links to cloud environments, and remote access for staff and vendors. This article sets out what each agency has published, who it applies to, how it compares internationally, and where to start.

When does the Australian Signals Directorate expect traditional asymmetric cryptography to stop being used?

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) expects traditional asymmetric cryptography to stop being used by the end of 2030. That is one of the most aggressive national targets currently published.

The date is written into the ASD Information Security Manual (ISM) Guidelines for Cryptography. Since the December 2024 ISM update, those guidelines treat RSA, finite-field Diffie-Hellman, ECDH and ECDSA as algorithms to be phased out rather than as long-term approved options. In their place the ISM points to ML-KEM for key establishment and ML-DSA for signatures, at their highest parameter sets, alongside AES-256 and SHA-384 or SHA-512.

ASD then published Planning for Post-Quantum Cryptography (2025) to explain how organisations should get there. NIST’s migration FAQ lists the ASD publication as released in September 2025. The guidance stresses that 2030 is an end date, not a starting point. Organisations are expected to finish their discovery and planning work well before then, so that the transition of critical systems can be under way in the late 2020s.

What milestones does the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security roadmap set for PQC migration?

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security ITSM.40.001 roadmap asks federal departments to deliver initial migration plans by April 2026, finish high-priority systems by the end of 2031 and finish all remaining systems by the end of 2035.

The full title is Roadmap for the migration to post-quantum cryptography for the Government of Canada, and it was published in June 2025. It describes a phased approach:

• Preparation and planning: each department appoints a lead, builds a cryptographic inventory and submits an initial PQC migration plan by April 2026, followed by regular progress reporting.
• High-priority systems by the end of 2031: systems that protect information with a long confidentiality requirement, or that are exposed to external networks, go first.
• All remaining systems by the end of 2035.

The roadmap also highlights procurement. New systems bought now will often still be running in 2035, so contracts should require support for the post-quantum algorithms the Cyber Centre recommends, together with the ability to change algorithms later.

Do the Australian and Canadian PQC timelines apply to critical infrastructure operators or only to government?

Formally, both timelines bind government bodies only. In practice, both agencies expect critical infrastructure operators to follow them, and supply-chain contracts are starting to pass the dates on.

Australia

The ISM applies to Commonwealth entities through their policy frameworks. ASD also publishes it for any organisation to use, and many critical infrastructure operators already map their controls against it. The Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 (Australia) does not name algorithms. However, its risk management program obligations require responsible entities to identify and mitigate material cyber risks to their assets. Harvest-now, decrypt-later collection of operational data is a foreseeable risk. Operators whose data must stay confidential beyond 2030 will find it hard to justify waiting.

Canada

ITSM.40.001 is addressed to Government of Canada departments and their non-classified IT. The Cyber Centre recommends that provinces, municipalities, utilities and private operators plan on similar timeframes. Suppliers to the federal government should expect PQC requirements to show up in procurement terms.

The urgency for OT is real in both countries. CISA anticipates that implementing post-quantum cryptography for OT systems will be a significant and enduring challenge for owners and operators of critical infrastructure, mainly because OT assets have long lifecycles and limited capacity for change.

“It is imperative for all organizations, especially critical infrastructure, to begin preparing now for migration to post-quantum cryptography.”

Jen Easterly, then Director of CISA (2023)

How do the Australian and Canadian deadlines compare with the EU, UK and US timelines?

Australia’s 2030 target sits with the EU’s 2030 date for high-risk use cases at the strict end of the range. Canada’s 2031 and 2035 milestones line up closely with the UK and US.

Some figures behind the table:

• EU (2025): All Member States should start transitioning to post-quantum cryptography by the end of 2026, and critical infrastructure protection should move to PQC no later than the end of 2030.
• US (NIST IR 8547 draft, 2024): RSA and ECDSA at 112 bits of security strength are deprecated after 2030 and disallowed after 2035. More broadly, NIST will deprecate and ultimately remove quantum-vulnerable algorithms from its standards by 2035, with high-risk systems transitioning much earlier.
• US policy goal: NSM-10 calls for mitigating as much of the quantum risk as is feasible by 2035.

“As we enter the quantum era, post-quantum cryptography is essential to ensure a high level of cybersecurity.”

Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President, European Commission (2025)

For multinational operators the practical consequence is simple: plan against the strictest date that applies to any of your sites. A utility group with Australian and Canadian assets that standardises on a 2030 target for externally exposed links will meet every timeline in the table.

Which network connections should be migrated first under ASD and Canadian guidance?

Start with the connections that carry long-lived sensitive data across networks you do not control: site-to-site links over the internet or carrier networks, links to cloud environments, and remote access. On those links, fix key establishment first.

Why key exchange comes before signatures

The European Commission warns that “store now, decrypt later” attacks are already likely occurring. Traffic protected with ECDH or RSA key exchange today can be recorded and decrypted once a cryptographically relevant quantum computer exists. Signatures do not carry that retroactive exposure. That is why both ASD and the Cyber Centre rank quantum-vulnerable key establishment on exposed links as the most urgent item.

A practical priority order for OT and critical infrastructure

1. Inter-site links over shared networks. SCADA traffic, historian replication and engineering access between control centres, substations, pump stations or plants, especially where they run as IPsec tunnels over the public internet or leased carrier lines.
2. Edge-to-cloud connections. Telemetry, asset-management and analytics flows from sites into cloud tenancies or a central data centre, which often carry years of operational history.
3. Remote access for staff and vendors. Remote sessions into OT networks carry credentials and configuration data, and they span many endpoints.
4. Internal links inside a single protected site, which can come later because traffic does not cross third-party infrastructure.

Discovery is the first concrete step. NIST’s migration project points out that Canadian quantum-readiness guidance suggests a number of protocols to scan for vulnerable cryptography, with TLS, SSH and IPsec as the core three. Those three protocols cover almost all of the connection types listed above.

Handling equipment that cannot change

One option for links between locations is a network-layer encryption gateway at each end of the connection. Quantum Network’s QPN is an example. It encrypts at Layer 3 using hybrid key agreement (classical combined with ML-KEM) and sits alongside existing firewalls and routers, so no software has to be installed on the OT equipment behind it. A gateway like this protects data in transit only. Firewalls, inspection and device hardening are still needed.

Why the timeline is tighter than it looks

Four to nine years sounds like plenty of time until you compare it with how long cryptographic migrations have taken in the past.

• Integration lag (NIST, 2024): moving a newly standardised algorithm into information systems has historically taken 10 to 20 years.
• Uneven exposure across critical functions (NIST SP 1800-38B draft, 2023): an assessment of the 55 US national critical functions rated six as high priority for migration assistance, 15 as medium and 34 as low.

OT refresh cycles are often 15 to 25 years, so equipment commissioned this year will probably still be running after 2035. Three planning decisions follow:

• Inventory by connection, not only by asset. For each link, record the protocol, the key exchange it uses, the networks it crosses and how long the data it carries stays sensitive.
• Write crypto agility into procurement now. Require approved post-quantum algorithms, plus a supported way to change algorithms later, for anything with a service life beyond 2030.
• Prefer changes that leave control systems untouched. In OT, changes that need recertification or downtime of process equipment take the longest. Network-layer protection on inter-site and remote links can usually go in without touching controllers.

For organisations covered by the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 or working with Canadian federal programs, the safest reading is this: treat 2030 as the target for every connection that leaves a site, and use the years before then for inventory, procurement changes and staged rollout.