Solutions / Quantum Compliance
Prepare for a risk technology cannot solve alone.
Moving to post-quantum cryptography is not an IT upgrade. It raises questions of governance, risk, third-party dependency, operational resilience, regulatory expectation, investment and accountability. Quantum Compliance helps a financial institution see its exposure, give the risk an owner and build a readiness plan before migration becomes urgent. Technology teams handle the cryptography. Taft helps the organization govern the transition.
Who it’s for
For institutions where the transition will take years, and the data must last longer.
- Firms holding long-lived sensitive data: customer, KYC, transaction, custody, identity and legal information that must stay confidential for years.
- Complex technology estates: many applications, APIs, certificates, authentication mechanisms and legacy systems.
- Critical financial infrastructure: payments, custody, clearing, settlement, trading and market infrastructure.
- Heavy third-party dependence: cloud providers, core processors, technology vendors, payment providers and outsourced platforms.
- Long transformation cycles, where a major technology change takes years to plan, test and implement.
- In practice: banks, payment companies, market infrastructure, custodians, broker-dealers, asset managers, insurers, fintechs and digital-asset businesses.
What you get
What you receive.
We are not selling cryptography engineering. We turn a cryptography problem into a management problem the organization can govern.
Quantum readiness diagnostic
A clear statement of where the organization stands and where its principal exposures are.
Readiness heat map
Governance, cryptographic visibility, data, critical systems, third parties, resilience and migration planning, on one page.
Exposure and dependency map
Where the firm depends on quantum-vulnerable cryptography, and which areas need deeper technical discovery or priority attention.
Third-party readiness assessment
The critical vendor dependencies, their readiness gaps, and the questions to build into vendor oversight.
Regulatory and standards horizon
The developments that matter in the jurisdictions you operate in, and what they mean for you.
Governance framework
Recommended ownership, responsibilities, escalation and management and board oversight.
Post-quantum roadmap
Now: understand the exposure and establish ownership. Next: inventory, prioritize and engage critical vendors. Prepare: build crypto-agility and migration capability. Migrate: execute the technical transition against risk and the applicable timelines.
Executive and board readout
The risk, the current readiness, the priorities and the decisions required, explained at management level.
Options
Three depths.
Most firms do not need a migration program yet. They need to know where they stand. Start there.
Quantum Readiness Check
- Executive-level diagnostic of governance, exposure, third parties and preparedness
- Maps where the firm depends on quantum-vulnerable cryptography
- Identifies the vendors and data with the most exposure
- A report you can act on and put in front of a board
- Typically one to two weeks
Quantum Compliance 360
- Everything in the Check
- Regulatory horizon and risk framework
- Vendor readiness, criticality and migration strategy
- Typically three to five weeks
Enterprise Quantum Readiness Program
- Multi-entity or multi-jurisdiction
- Deeper technology discovery with specialist technical partners
- Scope and timeline set with the organization
Why now
The standards are final. The rules are still forming. Migration takes years.
Quantum computers able to break today’s public-key cryptography do not yet exist at the necessary scale. The question for management is not when they will arrive. It is whether, if the cryptographic environment eventually has to change, the firm knows what is exposed, what matters most, who owns the risk, which third parties it depends on and how it would manage the transition.
The standards exist
NIST published the first post-quantum standards, FIPS 203, 204 and 205, in August 2024, and its draft transition report proposes deprecating the weaker quantum-vulnerable algorithms after 2030 and disallowing them after 2035. Those dates are written for federal systems. They are already shaping private roadmaps.
Supervisors abroad are moving
The Swiss, Hong Kong and European Union authorities have begun to say what they expect of the institutions they oversee, and the G7 Cyber Expert Group published a financial-sector roadmap in January 2026. In the United States, we are not aware of a financial regulator that has published an examination expectation for private firms.
Harvest now, decrypt later
Data captured today can be decrypted when the capability arrives. For information with a long confidentiality life, the exposure is not in the future.
Migration is slow
Inventory, vendors, testing and replacement take years in a large estate. A firm that starts when a regulator asks has started late.
What we assess
Ten questions, calibrated to the size of the organization.
Every engagement is scoped to the organization’s business, technology environment and regulatory footprint.
Governance and accountability
Who owns quantum readiness, and whether responsibilities are set across technology, cyber, risk, compliance, procurement and senior management.
Cryptographic visibility
Whether the organization knows where quantum-vulnerable cryptography exists and which systems, processes and data depend on it.
Data longevity and exposure
Which information needs long-term confidentiality, and where harvest-now, decrypt-later risk could matter.
Criticality and prioritization
Which systems and processes would cause the greatest customer, financial, operational or regulatory harm if their cryptographic protection failed.
Third-party readiness
Which vendors and infrastructure providers create dependencies, and whether they have credible post-quantum roadmaps.
Operational resilience
How migration could affect critical services, interoperability, availability and business continuity.
Regulatory and standards horizon
Which emerging standards, supervisory expectations and jurisdictional requirements are relevant to the organization.
Policies and risk frameworks
Whether quantum risk sits properly within cybersecurity, technology, operational resilience, third-party and enterprise risk frameworks.
Migration governance
Whether there is a documented, risk-based strategy for discovery, prioritization, testing and eventual migration.
Management and board oversight
Whether management can explain the exposure, the strategy, the dependencies, the investment required and the progress.
What Taft brings
Regulation, risk, governance, business, third parties and execution.
Our value sits where those six meet. In our Innovation Lab we have been testing approaches to quantum-safe banking and to the regulatory requirements likely to follow, so the advice is grounded in what the technology actually does.
Regulation
What regulators, governments and standards bodies are beginning to expect.
Risk
What quantum exposure actually means for this institution.
Governance
Who should own it and how it should be managed.
Business
Where investment makes sense, and where it would be premature.
Third parties
Which critical dependencies sit outside the organization’s control.
Execution
How a highly technical migration becomes a manageable enterprise program.
When to start
Start with the exposure, not with a purchase.
The moments below are when a readiness check earns its cost. The last one matters most: do not begin by buying technology.
When management cannot say where vulnerable cryptography sits
The inventory is the first thing any supervisor, auditor or board will ask for.
When critical data must stay confidential for years
The harvest-now, decrypt-later exposure is already running.
When the firm depends heavily on vendors
Their roadmaps decide yours.
When planning a multi-year technology or cyber strategy
Crypto-agility is cheaper to design in than to retrofit.
Before a major platform modernization
The best time to remove a dependency is when the platform is already open.
When regulators or customers begin asking
A considered answer beats an improvised one.
When operating where supervisory expectations are emerging
Switzerland, Hong Kong and the European Union are ahead; firms with reach into those markets may be asked sooner.
Before committing significant budget to post-quantum technology
Understand the exposure first. The purchase, if any, should follow the inventory.
How it runs
How it runs.
Discover
Establish the business, technology, regulatory and third-party perimeter.
Assess
Evaluate readiness across governance, exposure visibility, data, critical systems, vendors, risk management and migration planning.
Prioritize
Identify what matters first, by business criticality, data longevity, regulatory exposure and dependency.
Design
Set the governance structure, the risk framework, the responsibilities and the migration oversight model.
Roadmap
A practical sequence: what needs attention now, what to prepare next and what can wait. Where deep cryptographic discovery, architecture, testing or technical migration is required, Taft works alongside your technology organization and specialist technology partners.
Questions
Asked before, answered plainly.
- What is quantum compliance?
- The governance work of finding every place a firm depends on public-key cryptography that a quantum computer could one day break, and preparing to replace it in an order a supervisor could follow. It is not a regulatory term, and we are not aware of any rulebook that uses it. It is the name Taft uses for existing duties on information security, operational resilience and third-party risk, applied to a risk that is still taking shape.
- Is this a technology project?
- The migration is. The compliance work is making sure it is scoped against the right standards and expectations, prioritized by what is actually exposed, governed, evidenced and explained. Taft works alongside your technology team and your vendors. It does not replace them.
- Our regulator has not asked. Why start?
- Because data with a long confidentiality life is exposed today, because vendor contracts and system replacements take years, and because supervisors in Switzerland, Hong Kong and the European Union have already begun to say what they expect. In the United States we expect the questions to arrive through existing information security, operational resilience and third-party risk requirements, and sooner for firms with international reach.
- Should we buy post-quantum technology first?
- No. Start by understanding the exposure. A purchase made before the inventory tends to protect the wrong things. The Quantum Readiness Check exists so that the first spend is on knowing, not on buying.
- How long does it take?
- A Quantum Readiness Check typically takes one to two weeks. Quantum Compliance 360 typically takes three to five weeks. An enterprise program is scoped with you before anything starts.
Taft advises on governance, regulatory expectations and planning. It does not implement cryptography, provide legal advice, or guarantee any regulatory outcome.