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Practical Introduction to Quantum-Safe Cryptography

Practical introduction to quantum-safe cryptography is a free online course on the IBM Quantum Learning platform and serves as a primer on the foundational concepts in quantum-safe cryptography.

This course was created for developers who are interested in modernizing their application security and features multimodal lessons and interactive live code examples in four core areas of cryptography: cryptographic hash functions, symmetric key cryptography, asymmetric key cryptography, and quantum-safe cryptography.

By taking this course, developers will learn how the cybersecurity risk landscape is evolving as well as explore contemporary approaches poised to shape the quantum era.

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Practical Introduction to Quantum-Safe Cryptography illustration

Lessons

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Introduction to this course
  • Course introduction
  • Key takeaways for this course
  • Tips for navigating this course
  • Before you begin
  • Lesson structure
  • Running the Python examples
  • Digital Certification
  • Pre-course Survey
  • Next steps after this course
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Cryptographic hash functions
  • Introduction
  • Introduction to cryptographic hashing
  • Basic rationale and design of hash functions
  • Example of cryptographic hashing in Python with SHA-256
  • Applications of cryptographic hashing
  • Security of cryptographic hashing
  • Commonly used cryptographic hash functions
  • Summary
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Symmetric key cryptography
  • Introduction
  • Introduction to symmetric key cryptography
  • Properties of symmetric key cryptosystems
  • Illustration of symmetric key encryption using python
  • Applications of symmetric key cryptography
  • Principles of symmetric key encryption
  • Popular symmetric key algorithms
  • Advantages of symmetric key cryptography
  • Challenges and limitations of symmetric key cryptography
  • Quantum computing and symmetric key encryption: Risks and mitigation
  • Summary
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Asymmetric key cryptography
  • Introduction
  • Introduction to asymmetric key cryptography
  • Key exchange with asymmetric key cryptography
  • Digital signatures with asymmetric key cryptography
  • Applications of asymmetric key cryptography
  • Security of asymmetric key cryptography
  • RSA
  • Breaking RSA
  • Diffie-Hellman key exchange and the Digital Signature Algorithm
  • Breaking Diffie-Hellman and DSA
  • Elliptic curve cryptography
  • Summary
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Quantum-safe cryptography
  • Introduction
  • Introduction to quantum-safe cryptography
  • Quantum algorithms and impacts to cryptography
  • Basic principles of quantum-safe cryptography
  • NIST standardization of quantum-safe cryptography
  • Lattice-based cryptography
  • Module-LWE and the CRYSTALS suite
  • Hybrid cryptography
  • Summary
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What's next?
  • What's next?
  • Post-Course Survey
  • Digital Certification
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Works cited
  • Full list of references
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Exam

Take this exam to test your skills. This exam is intended to be taken after reading the lessons in this course. Once you have completed the exam, come back here to see your earned badge.

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Practical Introduction to Quantum-Safe Cryptography badge

IBM leverages the services of Credly, a 3rd party data processor authorized by IBM and located in the United States, to assist in the administration of the IBM Digital Badge program. In order to issue you an IBM Digital Badge, your personal information (name, email address, and badge earned) will be shared with Credly.

You will receive an email notification from Credly with instructions for claiming the badge. Your personal information is used to issue your badge and for program reporting and operational purposes. IBM may share the personal information collected with IBM subsidiaries and third parties globally. It will be handled in a manner consistent with IBM Privacy Statement.

Helpful materials

The following may be useful to you when reading through the course:

Pre-reading

This course contains a lot of detail on cryptography, and numerous maths examples which may use terminology and symbols you are not familiar with.

This Presentation offers:

  • A primer on cryptography
  • An introduction to some of the maths concepts used in this course

Course review

After completing the course you may find it useful to have a summary of what's been learnt as a take-away.

This Presentation includes the core content from this course in presentation form which can you download and refer back to.

Further reading

Credly

NOTICE: IBM leverages the services of Credly, a 3rd party data processor authorized by IBM and located in the United States, to assist in the administration of the IBM Digital Badge program. In order to issue you an IBM Digital Badge, your personal information (name, email address, and badge earned) will be shared with Credly. You will receive an email notification from Credly with instructions for claiming the badge. Your personal information is used to issue your badge and for program reporting and operational purposes. IBM may share the personal information collected with IBM subsidiaries and third parties globally. It will be handled in a manner consistent with IBM privacy practices. The IBM Privacy Statement can be viewed here: https://www.ibm.com/privacy/us/en/. IBM employees can view the IBM Internal Privacy Statement here: https://w3.ibm.com/w3publisher/w3-privacy-notice.