Confluent Cloud’s Path to Post-Quantum Cryptography

At Confluent, our mission is to provide the world’s most secure and scalable data streaming platform. So we’re aware and planning for a future where the threat of a large-scale, cryptographically relevant quantum computer is able to break the public key cryptographic algorithms in use today. In fact, the Quantum-Safe Working Group of the Cloud Security Alliance set April 14, 2030, as the deadline by which companies should have their post-quantum infrastructure in place.

The core of the challenge lies in current asymmetric cryptographic math, such as the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) algorithm and elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), which currently protect the TLS handshakes for data in transit. While a practical quantum computer may still be years away, the "harvest now, decrypt later" (HNDL) threat is a present-day risk. Bad actors can store encrypted transit data today with the intent of using a future quantum computer to find the private session keys.

To address this, Confluent is aligning with the latest National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS)—FIPS 203, 204, and 205—to build a road map toward a post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) infrastructure.

Data-in-Transit Encryption

The most urgent priority for PQC readiness is securing the handshake to prevent HNDL attacks. Our approach focuses on crypto-agility—ensuring that our platform can transition to new standards without disrupting your operations.

• TLS 1.3 is a technical requirement to support any PQC algorithm. As detailed in our announcement on strengthening security with TLS 1.3, we’ve made TLS 1.3 available as an opt-in feature on Dedicated clusters. On April 30, 2026, Confluent Cloud will enable TLS 1.3 by default for all newly provisioned clusters (including Dedicated clusters) and enable TLS 1.3 on all existing cluster types (except Dedicated clusters).

• In line with emerging industry standards, we’re moving toward a hybrid key exchange model. This combines traditional classical signatures with new PQC signatures. To compromise a session, an adversary would need to break both the classical and the quantum-resistant algorithms.

• We’re investigating the integration of FIPS-certified PQC signatures—including Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM), introduced in FIPS 203; Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA), introduced in FIPS 204; and Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Algorithm (SLH-DHA), introduced in FIPS 205—across our public endpoints.

Data-at-Rest Encryption

Data-at-rest encryption presents a different security profile. While quantum computers are highly effective against the current asymmetric math used in TLS handshakes, they provide only a modest speed-up against symmetric encryption using Grover’s Algorithm.

• Following the consensus from NIST and major cloud providers, 256-bit or higher symmetric cryptography is expected to remain safe in the quantum era. It offers approximately 128 bits of quantum security, which remains secure in a post-quantum world.

• On Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Confluent already uses symmetric Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256 keys for automatic encryption and Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) encryption, making these environments PQC-compliant for data at rest.

• For Microsoft Azure, we’re investigating adding support for Open Crypto Technology - Hardware Security Module (OCT-HSM) for data-at-rest encryption. OCT-HSM provides the only PQC-compliant keys that are currently available via Azure Key Vault.

Post-Quantum Crypto Resilience

Responsibility for security and compliance is shared between Confluent and the customer. We aim to ensure that the latest PQC features will be available for all customers either by default or as an opt-in feature. Customers can use the features as needed to meet their specific needs. We’ll communicate transparently as we make progress toward introducing new data-in-transit PQC signatures and data-at-rest PQC-compliant keys.

Have questions? Contact us to learn how we’re building the next generation of secure data streaming.