Brian C Founder & CEO, SITG-Consulting | Thought Leader & Forensic Strategist Quantum Risk, PQC, ERM, Compliance & Governance | Independent Validation | Board Advisor | Author | Quantum Risk Management 17 August 2026 This week closed a loop opened the week before and started several new ones. Nine days after an AWS cryptographer's preliminary algorithm reopened questions about the mathematics beneath ML-KEM, a formal, machine-checked refutation from researchers at MIT, Stanfo

🌐The Global Signals That Actually Mattered (3 - 9 August 2026) Brian C Founder & CEO, SITG-Consulting | Thought Leader & Forensic Strategist Quantum Risk, PQC, ERM, Compliance & Governance | Independent Validation | Board Advisor | Author | Quantum Risk Management 10 August 2026 This week's structural signal was theoretical provenance meeting sovereign procurement, moving on independent clocks. An Amazon Web Services cryptographer posted a preliminary polynomial-time quantum

Lithuania stands apart in our assessment of post-quantum readiness across the EU-27. It is the only Member State to reach Tier 1, High Confidence. This does not mean Lithuania has completed its PQC migration. It means something more useful at this stage: the country has established publicly verifiable migration machinery, with governance, mandatory actions, implementation dates, inventory requirements and procurement provisions. Government Posture: From Awareness to Execution

Brian C Founder & CEO, SITG-Consulting | Thought Leader & Forensic Strategist Quantum Risk, PQC, ERM, Compliance & Governance | Independent Validation | Board Advisor | Author | Quantum Risk Management 3 August 2026 This week's structural signal was verification, not capability. Anthropic stated its AI model broke a NIST post-quantum signature candidate that had survived two full rounds of accredited human expert review; the algorithm's own developers confirmed the finding an

27 July 2026 This week the confirmed signal set was dominated by state and quasi-state actors building coordination infrastructure rather than by vendors announcing capability. Israel opened a funded tender for national quantum R&D infrastructure, the UK's National Cyber Security Centre convened its first joint government-industry PQC migration workshop, and Japan's government-backed research agency launched a fiscal-year-scheduled silicon quantum manufacturing programme. In

It has become less tolerant of the past. This month, the IETF published RFC 9846, which replaces RFC 8446 while keeping the protocol as TLS 1.3. On the surface, it looks like a minor revision. It isn't. One change stands out: Implementations MUST NOT negotiate TLS 1.0 or TLS 1.1. Not "SHOULD NOT." Not "avoid where possible." MUST NOT. That matters because we're reaching a tipping point. For years, organisations carried obsolete cryptography because "it still works." Increasin

Brian C Founder & CEO, SITG-Consulting | Thought Leader & Forensic Strategist Quantum Risk, PQC, ERM, Compliance & Governance | Independent Validation | Board Advisor | Author | Quantum Risk Management July 20, 2026 This week the ecosystem moved from announcement to institutionalisation across three separate layers: standards, manufacturing and procurement. A code-based post-quantum algorithm reached ISO standardisation, giving the PQC landscape a second formal standards trac

Without sounding narcissistic, we’re often told we’re opinionated. Everyone is 100 percent correct. We are, and we will remain so. Not for ego. For rigour. If a proposition is weak, confused or stretching novelty beyond necessity, it should be challenged. Governance is a mature discipline. Reinventing it with diagrams and slogans helps nobody. Yesterday was a good example. A post appeared describing AI governance as a neat four layer staircase. I challenged it: "This is a per

Sensitive documents reportedly linked to India's Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant have been exposed following a ransomware attack affecting a contractor. According to Reuters, the leaked material includes engineering drawings, supplier information and inspection records, while there is currently no evidence that reactor control systems themselves were compromised. That distinction matters. Too often, critical infrastructure security is viewed through the lens of perimeter defen

July 12, 2026 The quantum threat isn't coming. It is already in your infrastructure. PQC Discovery and PQC Posture Management are maturing fast, but neither can deliver a governed, evidence-driven transformation. The missing capability is Transition Orchestration: the programme architecture that validates and proves every cryptographic decision. If your organization cannot prove every decision it makes, it does not control its cryptographic estate. It merely tracks it. Hard T

Brian Couzens Founder & CEO, SITG-Consulting | Forensic Strategist | Cyber Resilience, Quantum Risk & Governance | Transformation, ERM & Independent Validation | Writer | White Paper Author | Evidence-Based Decision Making June 29, 2026 This week featured an unusually dense cluster of consequential announcements across PQC governance, quantum hardware, capital formation, and infrastructure standardisation. The United States signed two executive orders simultaneously on 22 Jun

Science is doing exactly what science is supposed to do. A new peer-reviewed critique published in Nature has challenged aspects of Microsoft's Majorana-based quantum computing research, arguing that the evidence may not conclusively demonstrate the physics the company claims. Microsoft strongly disagrees and maintains its roadmap remains on track. This is not a story about Microsoft "failing." It is a reminder that extraordinary scientific claims invite extraordinary scienti

NIST CSF 2.0 may be one of the most important Quantum Readiness frameworks available today. Not because it contains a section on quantum computing. It doesn't. Not because it tells organisations which algorithms to deploy. It doesn't do that either. What CSF 2.0 does provide is something far more important. Governance. The 2024 update elevated governance to a core function, recognising that cybersecurity is no longer solely a technology challenge. It is a board, executive and

#Moody's may have delivered one of the most important post-quantum signals of 2026. Not because of a breakthrough in quantum computing. Not because of a new cryptographic standard. Because a global credit rating agency has started discussing Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) as a budgetary, governance and enterprise risk issue. For many years, this has been the position of SITG-Consulting. Our Quantum Risk White Paper, first published in 2024, revised in December 2025 and again