The most effective defense against next-generation cryptographic threats is continuous visibility into cryptographic assets, rapid cryptographic agility, hybrid post-quantum deployment, and continuous monitoring of trust relationships.
Today ECS through the Army Endpoint Security Solution (AESS) program is protecting the Army's network today for over 600,000 endpoints cloud to device providing a complete cryptographic inventory for certificates, libraries, algorithms, and cryptography.
Our solution provides the foundational cryptographic inventory and risk intelligence required to operationalize all four. ECS Federal, the Army's ACDI delivery lead, converts that intelligence into executed remediation, integration, and sustained resilience within the mission environment. Tychon supplies the cryptographic ground truth and ECS partners with the Army to operationalize it at echelon.
Hardening Command and Control (C2) networks against next-generation cryptographic and algorithmic threats requires a combination of cryptographic visibility, cryptographic modernization, identity assurance, and continuous monitoring. Specific and actionable approach to this accomplish this includes:
• Establishing a complete cryptographic inventory first. Organizations cannot protect what they cannot identify or see. Discover all instances of RSA, ECC, TLS, SSH, IPsec, PKI certificates, code-signing certificates, cryptographic libraries, and embedded cryptography across C2 infrastructure.
• Identify and prioritize quantum-vulnerable cryptography. Assess where Shor-vulnerable algorithms (RSA, ECDSA, ECDH, Diffie-Hellman) protect mission-critical communications, authentication systems, software signing processes, and operational data stores.
• Plan and prepare for cryptographic agility. Design systems to support rapid replacement of algorithms, certificates, and trust anchors without requiring major architectural changes or system downtime.
• Adopt hybrid classical-plus-PQC architectures. As CNSA 2.0 and NIST standards mature, deploy hybrid key exchange and digital signature mechanisms that combine current approved algorithms with post-quantum alternatives to reduce migration risk.
• Strengthen software supply chain trust. Advanced signature forgery threats place increased importance on validating code provenance, software bills of materials (SBOMs), cryptographic bills of materials (CBOMs), certificate chains, and signing infrastructure.
• Protect and monitor PKI infrastructure. Certificate Authorities, Registration Authorities, Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), and code-signing systems become increasingly attractive targets as adversaries seek to undermine trust relationships rather than directly attack endpoints.
• Validate mission systems against emerging forgery scenarios. Conduct exercises and assessments that assume compromised certificates, forged digital signatures, manipulated software updates, and corrupted trust chains to ensure operational resilience.
• Deploy continuous cryptographic monitoring. Treat cryptographic risk similarly to vulnerability management. Continuously monitor for weak algorithms, expired certificates, deprecated protocols, unauthorized cryptographic implementations, and policy violations.
• Prepare for harvested-data risk now. Sensitive operational traffic encrypted today may be captured and retained by adversaries for future decryption. Prioritize protection of long-lived mission, intelligence, logistics, and operational planning data.