Get in Loser, We're Upgrading the Internet -- Lessons from Deploying Post-Quantum Cryptography across Akamai's global Content Delivery Network

The adoption of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) is in full swing, and many cryptographic toolkits and libraries now support both pure and hybrid PQC algorithms like X25519MLKEM768. But what does it look like to integrate PQC into a global CDN infrastructure to protect a significant chunk of all internet traffic? In this talk, I will discuss the lessons from leading the PQC adoption program at Akamai and deploying quantum security at internet scale, including key exchange algorithm selection, the impact of the increased key sizes on performance and time-to-first-byte, as well as what lies beyond just the TLS key exchange bits most of us are currently focused on.

NIST standardized the first post-quantum cryptography algorithms in 2024, and browsers quickly followed with the adoption of the hybrid X25519MLKEM768 TLS 1.3 key exchange. Government around the world have since laid out timelines for the adoption of quantum-safe technologies with a time horizon of 2030-2035, meaning at this point it is almost irrelevant whether or not an actual Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer (CRQC) will manifest before then: huge industry sectors subject to compliance requirements will need to overhaul their entire crypto stack in the next 10 years. If you have any experience working in these industries, that is not a very long time.

Across the industry, several large infrastructure service providers have already moved to X25519MLKEM768. One of them is Akamai, who provide one of the world’s largest content delivery networks serving a significant portion of all internet traffic for thousands of customers across all verticals.

Rolling out post-quantum cryptography across Akamai’s CDN was a multi-year effort that required careful balancing of customer requirements, client capabilities, collaboration within the IETF and our industry peers, and consideration of performance impact and standards compliance across multiple legs of the common TLS connections involved in a CDN.

In this talk, I will discuss the lessons learned, including key exchange algorithm selection, the impact of the increased key sizes on performance and time-to-first-byte, how to get the buy-in from your executives to fund such a large program as well as how to nudge your more conservative customers and help them in the adoption.

In addition, I’ll give a look ahead at what’s next within the industry with respect to PQC, including the many places where TLS is used outside of an HTTPS context, what the deployment of post-quantum certificates will look like, and where else in your infrastructure you need to pay attention.

About the Speaker

Jan Schaumann

Jan Schaumann is an accidental information security professional, currently working as Chief Information Security Architect at Akamai, an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology, and Actual Human on the Internet with more than 25 years of experience ignoring all previous instructions and building and securing high-availability services at internet scale. His broad interests include all areas of information security and the overall health of the internet, as well as the safety and privacy of its users.

Chances are you’ve interacted directly or indirectly with code, sites, and systems on the internet that he has touched. (He’d like to apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused.)

You can follow Jan on Mastodon and catch some of his articles from his blog.