The urgency around Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) readiness has never been clearer. Each passing day brings us closer to the arrival of quantum systems capable of breaking today’s widely used encryption, putting any organisation handling sensitive data at risk.
Predictions on when this moment will arrive are accelerating. Last year, experts were suggesting ‘Q-Day’ would fall between 2030 to 2035, but as of July 2026, Google and Microsoft have each identified 2029 as an important target for transitioning products, services, and cryptographic infrastructure toward PQC, reinforcing the need for organisations to begin preparing now.
Yet despite these warnings, the majority of businesses remain unprepared for the cryptographic shockwave that quantum computing will unleash. More than 90% of surveyed organisations still have no formal roadmap for transitioning to post-quantum cryptography, even though sufficiently capable quantum computers could compromise widely deployed RSA- and elliptic-curve-based encryption, key-establishment, and digital-signature mechanisms. This creates long-term risk for device identities, attestation credentials, firmware-authentication processes, and other cryptographic protections.
Causes for concern
Worryingly, 81% of organisations also say their current crypto-libraries and Hardware Security Models (HSMs) are not ready for migration. These core security components are often embedded deep within legacy systems, making upgrades complex and costly – especially for businesses still operating on infrastructure built long before quantum threats were a consideration.
Skills shortages add further pressure, with many security teams lacking the expertise to assess PQC readiness or plan effective migrations. Overreliance on third-party vendors also creates bottlenecks when awaiting PQC-compatible upgrades. Further compounding this challenge is the fact that while 97% of organisations intend to invest in PQC within two years, cybersecurity spending is slowing, having only grown by 4% in 2025.
Is your TPM quantum-resistant?
To mitigate this gap, businesses are turning to industry standards in order to prepare for and mitigate future quantum security threats. Many enterprises assume they can simply rely on a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to anchor trust during the transition. This isn’t entirely incorrect – a TPM with the required PQC capabilities can enable quantum-resistant device identities, attestation, and hardware-rooted key protection – yet the TPM is only one component of the wider platform trust architecture. Firmware, operating systems, provisioning services, certificate infrastructure, and applications must also be able to use these capabilities before the complete platform can be considered PQC-ready.
Understanding what constitutes a PQC-ready TPM is becoming a crucial part of organisations preparing for the quantum era. As quantum-safe capabilities emerge, readiness can no longer be measured by algorithm support alone – a full spectrum of requirements must be considered, including secure identifies, resilient attestation, hardware-anchored trust, and long-term cryptographic durability. Only when these elements are aligned can a platform be considered genuinely prepared for post-quantum threats.
Avoiding a baseline
The risks posed by devices and TPMs that are not PQC-ready are significant. Core secrets like platform identities, attestation keys, and firmware measurements must remain secure for decades. Planning for that longevity must now be seen as a critical component of every organisation’s security posture.
One essential requirement for any TPM aiming to be fully PQC-ready must be the PC Client Platform TPM Profile 1.07 (PTP 1.07). Created to become the industry’s baseline for the transition to quantum-safe hardware, PTP 1.07 ensures the latest TPM 2.0 implementations remain secure, interoperable, and forward-compatible as cryptographic standards evolve.
Crucially, PTP 1.07 incorporates the PQC capabilities introduced in TPM 2.0 Library Specification v1.85 and mandates support for the required MLKEM and ML-DSA capabilities. It also defines requirements for PQC-capable Endorsement Keys and EK certificates where those certificates are provisioned, but it does not require every TPM to ship with a pre-provisioned EK certificate.
With this baseline in place, vendors offering TPMs can then build upward, adding optional extensions and capabilities that differentiate their products while maintaining alignment with the industry’s PQC-ready standard.
Defining a TPM’S PQC readiness
To bring additional clarity to the industry’s transition toward quantum safe hardware, we recently defined two clear TPM ‘states’ that describe the maturity of a platform’s post-quantum journey and its ability to support a secure shift from classical to PQC-based cryptography.
A Trusted Computing Group (TCG) PQC-upgradable TPM does not currently provide all the capabilities required by PTP 1.07, but has a documented and supported path to achieve conformance through an approved update or future implementation. A TCG PQC-ready TPM conforms to PTP 1.07 and therefore provides the TPM-level capabilities needed to support PQC-based identities, attestation and hardware-anchored trust. This designation describes the readiness of the TPM, rather than the end-to-end readiness of the complete platform.
Work is underway both within the TCG and other international standards organisations to expand current certification programmes to reflect ongoing progress in PQC algorithms. Once these are available, TPMs will have the ability to be certified to profiles that include the required PQC capabilities to deliver optimal device protection against quantum devices. This will define and provide the requirements for a TCG-certified PQC-ready TPM.
Security in the quantum age
While a TCG-certified PQC-ready TPM is not yet available, the introduction of PTP 1.07 and defined TPM states finally gives organisations a reliable way to verify whether a vendor’s claims of ‘quantum-safe’ protection stand are accurate. Instead of relying on marketing language or partial algorithm support, businesses can now assess TPMs against a clear, standards-based baseline to avoid devices that imply PQC compliance without delivering the full, end-to-end capabilities required for long-term security.
This is crucial for enterprises evaluating the resilience of their hardware and security stacks. Many long-lived devices will remain in service well into the quantum era, and TPMs that cannot support PQC-ready foundations risk becoming silent points of failure. By understanding where these weaknesses lie, organisations can plan for remediation early, rather than discovering gaps when it’s too late.
The ability to identify, categorise, and plan around TPM maturity marks a crucial step in building a durable post-quantum security posture. It empowers businesses to make informed procurement decisions, prioritise upgrades, and ensure that the devices anchoring their trust chains today will still be secure decades from now. In a landscape where cryptographic longevity is becoming as important as cryptographic strength, this structured approach is essential for every sector preparing for the quantum transition.
This article originally appeared in the Sept/Oct issue of Procurement Pro
