Post-Quantum Cryptography: 87% Plan, Only 7% Deploy at Scale

When Thales took the stage at its Cyber Summit in Paris on October 1, 2026, post-quantum protection was one of five headline launches 5. The timing is notable. Recent survey data shows that enterprise interest in post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is nearly universal, while actual deployment has barely moved. Vendors are offering more tools, but most organizations have not yet put them into production.

What Thales announced

Thales introduced a portfolio that covers several current security priorities. It includes a hardware security module (HSM) built for post-quantum protection, an AI-enabled data security posture management (DSPM) product, software protection aimed at AI-powered attacks, a broader partnership with Google Cloud to secure agentic AI workflows, and a new global approach to real-time threat detection and response 5. The company presented the package as a response to increasingly automated, AI-driven threats 5.

The PQC hardware is the piece most closely tied to the adoption problem. HSMs hold the keys at the root of an organization's trust infrastructure, so quantum-ready versions are a prerequisite for migration. Having one available does not mean anyone will deploy it quickly.

The numbers behind the gap

DigiCert's second annual Quantum Readiness Outlook, released July 23, 2026, surveyed 1,001 IT and security decision-makers in the US, UK, and Australia 1. It found that 87% of organizations are planning, testing, or implementing PQC initiatives. Only 7% said more than half of their digital certificates use quantum-safe or hybrid cryptography 134. A year earlier, DigiCert's May 2025 survey put enterprise quantum-safe deployment at 5% 1.

Coverage describes the year-over-year change slightly differently. One account calls it an increase of "less than two percentage points" 1, and another rounds it to two points 4. The difference likely comes from rounding. Either way, it is a small gain after a year of heavy industry attention.

A separate dataset points the same way. The Ponemon Institute's 2026 study of more than 4,000 practitioners worldwide found that only 38% are actively transitioning to PQC, a figure that fell from the previous year 2. In the same study, 68% said managing their cryptographic assets is extremely or very difficult 23. The DigiCert and Ponemon figures measure different things: intent versus active transition, and regional versus global samples. Both still describe a market where intent is far ahead of execution.

Why deployment is so slow

The main bottleneck appears to be public key infrastructure (PKI), not the choice of algorithm. ML-DSA signatures are roughly 15 to 50 times larger than the classical signatures they replace. Certificate chains also have to migrate starting from the root 3. That affects bandwidth, storage, legacy devices, and every system that parses a certificate. Many organizations also do not yet have a complete inventory of where cryptography runs in their environment, so they cannot plan a full migration 23.

There has been some progress. Microsoft made ML-DSA support generally available in Active Directory Certificate Services on Windows Server 2025 in May 2026, which brought PQC into mainstream enterprise PKI tooling 2. Respondents still expect a long timeline: the largest group, 39%, said the move to quantum-safe cryptography would take three to five years 4.

Deadlines and the harvest-now risk

Outside pressure is growing. Google had set a 2029 PQC migration target before DigiCert ran its survey 1. Executive Order 14412, which sets US federal migration deadlines for 2030 and 2031, was issued in June, after data collection had finished 1. This means the 7% figure may not yet reflect the effect of firm government deadlines. Next year's numbers will show whether that matters.

The main concern is the "harvest now, decrypt later" threat, in which attackers collect encrypted data today and store it until quantum machines can break it 4. Respondents named financial transaction records and banking data as the most likely first targets, with cryptocurrency private keys and wallets close behind 4. Data with a long shelf life is exposed now, even if a capable quantum computer is years away.

The takeaway

The evidence suggests the industry has a deployment problem more than an awareness problem. Vendors such as Thales and Microsoft are supplying the components, including quantum-ready HSMs and PQC-capable certificate services 25. What organizations mostly lack is the slow groundwork: cryptographic discovery, PKI redesign, and staged or hybrid rollouts matched to their regulatory exposure 3.

More product launches are unlikely to close that gap by themselves. Firm deadlines, such as the federal dates now in place and Google's 2029 target, are more likely to drive change 1. Organizations that start inventorying their cryptography now will be better placed than those that wait.