[saag] Fwd: [arch-d] Call for Papers: IAB Workshop on Accelerating the Deployment of Post-Quantum Authentication (pqw s)

FYI,

Deb

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: IAB Executive Administrative Manager <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 3:51 PM
Subject: [arch-d] Call for Papers: IAB Workshop on Accelerating the
Deployment of Post-Quantum Authentication (pqws)
To: IETF Announcement List <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>


# IAB Workshop on Accelerating the Deployment of Post-Quantum
Authentication (pqws)

Workshop webpage: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/pqws/about/

## Executive Summary

The IAB is hosting a workshop for implementers, operators and protocol
designers to help facilitate the acceleration of the deployment of
post-quantum signatures and authentication. The workshop will (tentatively)
be held in Prague, Czechia on October 11-12 to co-locate with the 2026
OpenSSL conference. The goal of the workshop is to document deployment
experience, challenges, and the open questions that remain.

## Call for Papers

### The problem

Post-quantum key establishment is now widely deployed across the Internet.
Post-quantum authentication is the harder half, and it lags. The signatures
and public keys are large, several kilobytes for ML-DSA [FIPS204] and
SLH-DSA [FIPS205] signatures larger still, whereas the elliptic-curve
mechanisms in use today take a few dozen bytes. Authentication uses them in
many places at once, and there is no single switch to throw, because the
work is spread across certificates, the public-key infrastructure, the
hardware that holds keys, identity tokens, and firmware and software
signing, some of it validated offline or years later.

The first algorithms and specifications are arriving, but adoption is
barely underway: a 2025 survey of more than a thousand security leaders
found only 5% had deployed any quantum-safe encryption [PQREADY], and
authentication lags even that. The people who will have to close the gap,
certificate authorities, vendors of hardware security modules (HSMs),
trusted platform modules (TPMs), secure elements and smartcards, identity
providers, firmware and software signing teams, and operators of regulated,
constrained, or long-lived systems, are mostly not the people who
participate in standardization. Without a shared picture of what impedes
deployment and where the open problems lie, post-quantum authentication
will fragment. This workshop brings deployment experience together with the
people working on the approaches and the relevant standards, to produce a
clear, sourced snapshot of what is blocking deployment and where the open
problems are.

### In and out of scope

In scope is the deployment of post-quantum authentication: signatures,
certificates, tokens, the hardware that holds keys, and the practice around
them. The proposed approaches, including hybrid and composite signatures,
Merkle Tree Certificates, and KEM-based authentication, are examined as far
as their deployment implications are concerned. The workshop is not
intended to compare, recommend, or converge on any particular approach, nor
to select or standardize algorithms. Post-quantum key establishment is not
itself in scope; it appears only as a source of lessons that carry over to
authentication.

### What to submit

We are looking for short position papers (1-2 pages PDF) on real experience
with post-quantum authentication. The most common kind describes a specific
deployment problem: what is being deployed or planned, which element is
blocked, what can be worked around and at what cost, and what cannot with
current specifications, tools, hardware, or practice. The paper does not
need to be reporting a blocker. We also want researchers with relevant
results, measurements of where deployment stands today, regulatory and
policy constraints, and honest accounts of migrations that were attempted
and ran into trouble. Give the figures that support your point, such as
sizes, timings, throughput, memory, or validation timelines, and say where
you think follow-up should occur. Lessons from post-quantum
key-establishment deployment are welcome where they carry over to
authentication, though key establishment is not itself a topic for this
workshop.

Examples of topics we want to hear about, not an exhaustive list:

* Certificates, PKI, DNS: chain and handshake size, path validation across
mixed chains, transparency, and revocation growth.
* Keys and hardware: HSM, FIPS 140-3, and PKCS#11 readiness, and the
management of stateful hash-based keys, IoT/constrained devices.
* Identity and tokens: post-quantum signatures in JOSE and COSE tokens and
the systems built on them, such as OAuth, verifiable credentials, and
WebAuthn.
* Software and firmware signing: package, container, and firmware size
limits, offline verification, and long-lived or archival validation.
* The approaches in practice: where hybrid and composite signatures
[COMPOSITE], Merkle Tree Certificates [MTC], and KEM-based authentication
[AUTHKEM] fit and where they break, migration strategies.

Submissions are due 4 September 2026 (AoE) via email to
[email protected]. Decisions will be issued on a rolling basis as
submissions arrive, with all outcomes communicated by 14 September 2026\.
Submitters who need extra lead time for visas or travel approval should say
so in their submission, and the Program Committee will prioritize their
decisions.

### Who should participate

The people most needed are those who will deploy Post-Quantum
Authentication and are not usually at the IETF: certificate authorities and
trust-store operators, hardware and HSM vendors, identity providers,
firmware and software signing teams, regulated-sector operators, and
operators of constrained or long-lived systems.

### What the workshop produces

A report published on the IAB stream summarizing the submissions and the
discussion. It is intended to document deployment experience, challenges,
and open questions, not to recommend or converge on any particular
approach, or to direct the work of IETF working groups or the IRTF. The
workshop organizers may also propose a subsequent venue for follow-ups and
next steps.

### Logistics

The workshop will be by invitation only. This is an in-person meeting.
Remote participation may be offered at the Program Committee's discretion.
Those wishing to attend should submit a "position paper". One or two pages
in PDF is enough, relevant submitted position papers will be published on
the workshop's datatracker page, and papers from people who do not plan to
attend are also welcome. Submissions are inputs to the agenda, not talks,
and not every submission will be presented. The workshop itself will be
focused on discussions. Anyone may submit a short statement of interest in
place of a full position paper, though position papers carry more weight in
shaping the agenda. The Program Committee may also invite key participants
directly, without a submission.

Accepted position papers will normally be published on the Datatracker
before the workshop. Authors who would prefer that their paper not be
published, or that specific material be handled without attribution, should
indicate this at submission and note whether it affects what they would be
willing to present during the workshop. If any discussion requires the
Chatham House Rule, please indicate that during the workshop or to the
respective session moderator in advance. The workshop will not have public
recordings or minutes, however, collabrative notes (e.g., via HedgeDoc)
will be maintained to assist in preparing the report and kept as a public
reference, excluding any sections subject to the Chatham House Rule.

The IETF code of conduct, and the IETF anti-harassment policy apply.
Contributions are subject to the IETF intellectual property policy.

* Paper submissions due by: 2026-09-04
* Invitations to attendees sent: rolling as submissions arrive; all
outcomes by 2026-09-14
* Workshop date: 2026-10-11 (Sunday) and 2026-10-12 (Monday)
* Workshop location: Prague
* Program committee:
  * Nick Sullivan (Cryptography Consulting LLC/IAB)
  * Yaroslav Rosomakho (Zscaler/IAB)
  * Suresh Krishnan (Cisco/IAB)
  * Thom Wiggers (PQShield)
  * Mike Ounsworth (Cryptic Forest Software)
  * Hoss Shafagh (Netflix)
  * Vladimir Soukharev (Keyfactor)
  * Tim Hollebeek (DigiCert)
  * Murugiah Souppaya (HP)

### References

* [FIPS204] NIST, "Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard," FIPS
204.
* [FIPS205] NIST, "Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Standard," FIPS
205.
* [COMPOSITE] "Composite ML-DSA for use in X.509 Public Key
Infrastructure," draft-ietf-lamps-pq-composite-sigs.
* [MTC] "Merkle Tree Certificates," draft-ietf-plants-merkle-tree-certs.
* [AUTHKEM] "KEM-based Authentication for TLS 1.3,"
draft-celi-wiggers-tls-authkem.
* [PQREADY] DigiCert, "2025 Quantum Readiness Study," Propeller Insights
survey of 1,042 security leaders, May 2025,
https://www.digicert.com/news/quantum-readiness-gap-a-digicert-study-on-quantum-safe-encryption
.

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