Your cryptographic assets are a vital asset for securing digital communications and data. These assets include encryption keys, certificates, and algorithms.
However, you must maintain your cryptographic asset inventory. If you don’t, you could be at risk for several damaging scenarios. Expired or weak cryptographic assets make excellent targets for hackers because they’re vulnerable to security breaches. It will also be more difficult to mitigate a security breach because you don’t know which cryptographic assets are in your inventory, and it will be more difficult to perform incident response and forensic analysis.
We’re shifting to post-quantum cryptography (PQC), an era in which powerful quantum computers will be able to solve thorny, previously intractable problems.However, quantum computers can also easily overcome current data security methods. You need modern defensive strategies to prepare for the age of PQC.
A foundation for those strategies is understanding your cryptographic asset inventory. Auditing your inventory is part of sound corporate governance as well as regulatory compliance. The impact of a breach due to poor cryptographic asset inventory management wouldn’t just be fines–it would be enormous damage to an organization’s reputation. Cryptographic asset inventory auditing is a step towards reducing your cybersecurity risk, preparing yourself for a PQC future.
Quantum Computing: Here’s What’s at Stake
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) urges organizations to be ready for PQC by 2030. However, developments in quantum computing could come even faster than that, which is why it’s critical to act now.
How will quantum computing affect current cryptography? Let’s look at blockchain as an example.
Blockchain relies upon asymmetric cryptography to verify transactions and maintain the safety of its ledger. Quantum computing can easily overcome that cryptography. We’ll find ourselves in a situation where signatures could be forged and trust in blockchain would crumble.
Hackers are already preparing for this situation. Organizations should be too. Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL) attacks involve collecting encrypted data now, waiting for quantum computing to advance to the point where they can decrypt it. If you have sensitive data such as financial records, healthcare data, or intellectual property that needs to stay safe for a decade or more, you’re at risk.
There’s some good news: quantum-safe algorithms can resist a quantum computer attack. Developed by the NIST, these algorithms can secure a wide range of electronic information, from confidential email messages to e-commerce transactions.
The question becomes, which of your cryptographic assets needs to be transitioned to a quantum-safe algorithm? That’s where auditing your assets comes in.
The Relationship Between Audits and Crypto-Agility
In a PQC era, crypto-agility will be vital to protect organizations.
Crypto-agility refers to the ability to replace and adapt cryptographic algorithms for protocols, applications, software, hardware, and infrastructures without disrupting their operations to achieve resiliency.
When you audit your cryptographic asset inventory, you can determine what needs updating or replacing. Taking actions based upon what you learn from an audit boosts your organization’s resilience against attacks featuring quantum technologies. And that’s what you want to accomplish, so let’s dive into the main benefits of an audit.
Identify Weak or Expired Cryptographic Assets
Step one in your cryptographic asset audit is determining what’s weak or expired.
When the SHA-1 and RSA-1024 algorithms were developed, they protected against the threats of that time (or the threats envisaged at that time). However, threats evolve. Algorithms, keys, and certificates must evolve, too, or they won’t protect you. If your keys or certificates use legacy algorithms, your risks for a cyberattack increase.
Using expired assets creates security loopholes which attackers can use to exploit your vulnerabilities. For example, an attacker monitoring your traffic could use an expired asset to alter it so that they’re the recipient of a money transfer. By uncovering and updating these assets, you can avoid trust issues and compliance violations.
Prevent Unauthorized or Shadow Cryptography
Unauthorized or shadow cryptography takes place when employees use third-party software for encryption without the IT department’s knowledge. It creates a risk for organizations because it obscures what’s going on and makes it more difficult to understand what cryptographic assets exist. Let’s say that an employee uses third-party software to encrypt data. Even if that software is sanctioned, the IT department doesn’t know about it and can’t control it.
Here’s another example: a developer or a dev team decides to use self-signed certificates. Self-signed certificates are public key certificates with signatures that can be verified by the public key contained within the certificates. They’re convenient, but they don’t guarantee that the certificate information is authentic.
When individuals or teams take these kinds of shortcuts, cryptographic assets multiply, making them tougher or impossible to monitor via the proper security or IT team. Centralized control of these assets strengthens your security posture by providing the visibility needed to close security gaps and make updates on time.
Future-Proof Your Organization with Crypto-Agility
Are you using older algorithms? Standards bodies like the NIST are deprecating them because they can no longer effectively protect organizations, especially against the potential risks of quantum computing.
Because the PQC era is on the horizon, you must identify legacy assets and upgrade them. During an audit, you’ll flag the assets that need to transition to more effective cryptography, or you’ll determine what’s future-proof. This step is crucial in your crypto agility journey towards.
Reduce Operational Risk and Avoid Outages
When you audit your cryptographic assets, you may discover missed renewals or misconfigured keys. Those things can cause service outages.
Manual methods to track assets and their expiration dates increase risks. Manual tracking methods are error-prone. You can easily enter data incorrectly, and there’s no way to automatically update records when you add or deprecate an asset. If you’re looking to automate your PKI processes, Keyfactor Command offers full visibility, orchestration, and automation across your entire PKI and certificate landscape in a single platform. Request a demo.
Auditing reveals the gaps in lifecycle management so you can proactively manage renewals to maintain service reliability and customer trust.
Key Points to Remember about Cryptographic Asset Auditing
It’s easy to think about cryptographic asset auditing as a one-and-done process. However, that’s not the case. Here’s why:
- You can’t manage what you don’t know you have. Shadow or unauthorized cryptography allows cryptographic assets to proliferate, and weak or obsolete assets could put your organization at risk. As we move closer to PQC, the need to be crypto agile is vital.
- Automation is the only practical path for cryptographic asset management moving forward. Manual methods are error-prone, slow, and unsustainable at scale.
- Automated discovery and continuous monitoring keep your organization safe by identifying risks. You’re no longer guessing about what assets you have–you can be confident about what assets exist and what risk they pose.
Prepare for PQC with Automated Discovery and Monitoring
The era of quantum computing could arrive faster than we think. Hackers are already preparing. Are you?
Here’s how you can get ready:
- Don’t treat cryptographic asset auditing as a one-and-done exercise.
- Automating your discovery and monitoring capabilities speeds cryptographic audit processes so they can become a regular part of your security processes.
- Keyfactor Command offers automated discovery, inventory, and renewal of certificates and keys, helping you avoid outages, reduce risk, and stay ahead of compliance deadlines.
Don’t wait for an outage or audit failure. Start auditing your cryptographic inventory now and automate the process with a purpose-built solution. Request a demo to see how Keyfactor Command works for you.
