State of Post-Quantum Security
A measured view of how technology-press attention is distributed, moving and connected across 40 related topics — who holds attention, who is gaining or cooling, whether attention is concentrating or spreading out, which topics the press repeatedly connects, and what kind of coverage defines the conversation.
This is a Lens Report covering Post-Quantum Security — a measurement of how the technology press covered the 40 topics in this lens, between Jul 2025 and Oct 2026, across 2,995 articles. Measured as of 6 Oct 2026. Coverage draws on at least 64 distinct outlets; the busiest single outlet accounts for about 38.2% of the set's measured press items.
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Compass reads a curated panel of technology outlets — the same panel, read at the same steady pace, month after month — and counts and classifies what the press publishes about the topics in this lens: how much attention each drew, what kinds of stories ran, which way coverage is moving, and what was covered together. Every figure below is a measurement of that coverage — never advice — and each one opens to the dated articles behind it. Read it as a coverage-landscape briefing — a measured map of the press conversation, not a ranking of the companies or technologies underneath it. The pattern is the product; the conclusions stay yours.
- Most-covered topicNIST — 12.1% of the lens's coverage
- Fastest-gainingIonQ — +2.9 pp (3.8% → 6.7% of lens coverage)
- Attention concentrationThe top 3 topics hold 27% of the coverage — broadly spread
- Strongest pairingML-KEM + NIST — covered together in 19 articles · distinctiveness 0.65
Post-Quantum Security coverage is broadly spread but structured: recent attention is rotating from NIST and explicit encryption topics toward a wider set of named subjects, while ML-KEM-linked cryptography supplies its strongest editorial spine.
- NIST leads coverage at 12.1%, ahead of quantum computing at 9.2%, yet attention remains broadly spread rather than anchored to one subject.
- News and updates make up 32% of coverage, launches 29% and partnerships 19%, so developments and relationships supply most of the press structure.
- The press places 72% of reported work at announcement, 18% at launch and 9% at results, so its narrative is weighted toward stated activity rather than reported outcomes.
- Neutral framing accounts for 93%, against 6% promotional and 1% critical, which makes the allocation of attention more consequential than overt stance in shaping the lens.
- Regulation accounts for 4% of story types, yet the strongest pairing joins ML-KEM and NIST, so an institution-linked cryptography thread is structurally visible without dominating article formats.
- The separate ML-KEM, Amazon Braket and Alice & Bob clusters show that broad distribution is structured into editorial neighborhoods rather than isolated subjects.
This report describes how the technology press covered the 40 topics in this lens over full history — which drew the most coverage, which are gaining or cooling, what's covered together, and how concentrated attention is. It measures coverage patterns, not the products themselves.
The full-history Post-Quantum Security lens runs from July 2025 through October 2026. Coverage spans 40 subjects across 2,995 articles. Attention in this lens is broadly spread — the three most-covered topics hold about 27% of the set's coverage, spread across roughly 22 effective topics.
| Topic | Type | Share of coverage | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| NIST | organization | 12.1% | −4.9 pp |
| quantum computing | technology | 9.2% | +1.2 pp |
| IonQ | company | 5.4% | +2.9 pp |
| post-quantum cryptography | technology | 5.3% | +1.1 pp |
| ETH Zurich | organization | 4.6% | −0.9 pp |
| University of Chicago | organization | 3.5% | −1.1 pp |
| Quantinuum | company | 3.4% | +0.9 pp |
| Caltech | organization | 3% | +0.2 pp |
| IQM Quantum Computers | company | 2.8% | −1.5 pp |
| National Security Agency | organization | 2.7% | +1.2 pp |
| quantum error correction | technology | 2.6% | +1.1 pp |
| D-Wave Quantum Inc | company | 2.5% | +1.6 pp |
| quantum computers | technology | 2.5% | +0.4 pp |
| OpenSSL | standard | 2.4% | −0.5 pp |
| end-to-end encryption | technology | 2.3% | −2.6 pp |
| Infleqtion | company | 2.2% | +0.2 pp |
Topic share = that topic's measured articles divided by the sum of every lens topic's measured articles. An article covering several lens topics counts once for each of them, so shares measure attention to topics — not exclusive slices of unique articles. Lens entries are coverage topics, not mutually exclusive market participants — a company, its products and its models can each be topics, and their coverage overlaps. Movement is the share shift described under Momentum shifts below.
The rotation appears in a comparison of each subject’s coverage share in the latest three months with the preceding three, with shifts below 0.2 percentage points treated as steady. IonQ gained 2.9 points while NIST fell 4.9, and Pasqal rose 2.3, so recent attention is dispersing from the overall leader across multiple named subjects. End-to-end encryption fell 2.6 points while post-quantum cryptography is cooling, which shows that the rotation reaches explicit security topics as well as NIST.
Movement is each topic's share of the lens's coverage in the last 3 months versus the 3 months before that, in percentage points (pp). Topics shifting less than 0.2 pp are steady.
- IonQ+2.9 pp (3.8% → 6.7% of lens coverage)
- Pasqal+2.3 pp (1.7% → 4% of lens coverage)
- CUDA-Q+1.7 pp (0.2% → 1.9% of lens coverage)
- D-Wave Quantum Inc+1.6 pp (2.4% → 4% of lens coverage)
- Xanadu+1.5 pp (1.2% → 2.7% of lens coverage)
- quantum computing+1.2 pp (9.6% → 10.8% of lens coverage)
- National Security Agency+1.2 pp (2.6% → 3.8% of lens coverage)
- post-quantum cryptography+1.1 pp (6% → 7.1% of lens coverage)
- NIST−4.9 pp (13.2% → 8.3% of lens coverage)
- end-to-end encryption−2.6 pp (3.2% → 0.6% of lens coverage)
- IQM Quantum Computers−1.5 pp (4.2% → 2.7% of lens coverage)
- University of Chicago−1.1 pp (3% → 1.9% of lens coverage)
- IBM Research−1.1 pp (2.6% → 1.5% of lens coverage)
- RIKEN−1.1 pp (1.7% → 0.6% of lens coverage)
- ETH Zurich−0.9 pp (4.2% → 3.3% of lens coverage)
- Willow−0.9 pp (1.5% → 0.6% of lens coverage)
How the lens's coverage is divided among its topics, month by month — and how concentrated attention is across the set.
Steady — across the last three measured months the top three have held 28.4% of this set's coverage, within 3 points of the 28.3% they held at the start of the window. Neither consolidating nor broadening.
Every value here is a dated measurement of coverage within this set, drawn from the Enginerds corpus — the same panel of sources, read at the same steady pace, month after month. It reflects how much the press writes about each topic, not revenue, adoption, or market share. The conclusion stays yours.
Pooled across the whole lens: the kinds of stories the press runs, how far the reported work has progressed (as the press itself describes it), and the press framing.
Story type is a share of the 2,001 classified coverage items classified on that axis; claim stage of the same number; press framing of the 2,001 whose framing could be read.
Across the full record, ML-KEM and NIST are the most strongly connected pairing, covered together in 19 articles, which gives the broadly spread lens a clear topic–organization anchor. RSA is covered with post-quantum cryptography in 10 articles and Shor’s algorithm in 7, so it acts as an editorial hinge within the ML-KEM cluster. Beyond that core, separate clusters around Amazon Braket and Alice & Bob create parallel editorial neighborhoods, which is why broad coverage is structured rather than atomized.
Pairings are ranked by connection strength: distinctiveness weighted by how many confirmed events link the pair and how far apart the two topics sit in the field, with a company's own product-family pairs set aside. So a pair can rank above another that shows a higher raw distinctiveness score or more shared articles — each card carries both numbers. Distinctiveness is normalized co-occurrence (NPMI, −1 to 1): how much more often the pair shares stories than the two topics' separate coverage volumes alone would predict. Big topics co-occur often by volume alone; a high score means the pairing itself is the pattern. Each pairing also shows how many outlets its cited stories span: a pairing cited almost entirely by one specialist outlet is that outlet's editorial pattern, not necessarily a field-wide one. "Covered together" is a measurement of shared coverage across Compass's full measured record — not only this report's window — and not a partnership, endorsement, or equivalence.
- ML-KEM + NIST topic–actor
- SEALSQ QS7001 Post-Quantum Secure Element Obtains NIST SP 800-90B Entropy Source Validation
- Standardizing Post-Quantum IPsec: Cloudflare Adopts Hybrid ML-KEM to Replace Ciphersuite Bloat
- SEALSQ Unveils Quantum Shield QS7001, First Chip with Hardware-Embedded NIST PQC Algorithms
- New ML-KEM standard aims to protect data from future quantum attacks
- NIST standardized ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, and ML-KEM for post-quantum cryptography.
- NIST standardized ML-KEM, formerly known as Kyber.
- NIST established initial standards for post-quantum cryptography with ML-KEM and ML-DSA.
- RSA + Shor’s algorithm topic–topic
- JDK 27: The quiet before the storm
- Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare just made 2029 the new quantum deadline
- Establishing an Analytical Framework to Benchmark Logical Qubit Performance Claims
- Quantum Computers Are Not a Threat to 128-bit Symmetric Keys
- Asymmetric cryptography systems like ECDH and RSA are at risk from Shor’s algorithm.
- post-quantum cryptography + RSA topic–topic
- Why Post-Quantum Cryptography Starts With Credentials
- JDK 27: The quiet before the storm
- Security In The Era Of Quantum Computing
- Four key areas in cybersecurity that need fresh thinking and actionable steps in 2026
- Google urged the wider industry to adopt post-quantum cryptography to replace or augment elliptic curves and RSA.
- PQC + RSA topic–topic
- ML-KEM + post-quantum cryptography topic–topic
- ML-KEM + SEALSQ Corp topic–actor
- quantum computing + RSA topic–topic
- Security In The Era Of Quantum Computing
- Quantum computing looms, and your security is nowhere near ready
- Five Test Considerations to Prepare for Q-Day
- Four key areas in cybersecurity that need fresh thinking and actionable steps in 2026
- Advances in quantum computing are prompting urgent updates to legacy RSA and elliptic-curve algorithms.
- ML-KEM + Shor’s algorithm topic–topic
- Amazon Braket + QuEra Computing actor–actor
- QuEra’s Libra Fault-Tolerant Quantum System Heading To Amazon Braket Service
- AWS and QuEra lay out roadmap to fault-tolerant quantum computing in next two years
- QuEra’s Libra Fault-Tolerant Quantum System Heading To AWS Braket Service
- The Road To HPC And AI Profits Is Paved With Good Intentions
- QuEra announced Libra, a fault-tolerant neutral-atom quantum system that will be hosted on Amazon Braket in 2028.
- QuEra launched its 256-qubit analog Rydberg device Aqulia on AWS Braket in 2022.
- AWS plans to launch QuEra’s Libra system on AWS Braket in 2028.
- Alice & Bob + ETH Zurich actor–actor
- Amazon Braket + IQM Quantum Computers actor–actor
- Amazon Braket Launches Program Sets to Accelerate Quantum Algorithm Execution
- Amazon Braket Launches IQM Emerald 54-Qubit Superconducting Quantum Processor
- Conductor Quantum Launches CODA MCP to Integrate Quantum Tools with AI Agents
- Chip Industry Week in Review
- Amazon Braket launched a new 54-qubit superconducting quantum processor from IQM Quantum Computers.
- Amazon Braket launched general availability of IQM Emerald, a 54-qubit superconducting QPU.
- Classiq + IonQ actor–actor
- Classiq, INGL, and IonQ Advance Quantum Optimization for Natural Gas Transmission Networks
- Classiq and SKKU’s QCenter Launch Quantum Software Education Initiative in Korea
- Quantum algorithms enhance network resilience in Classiq, Comcast, AMD trial
- Classiq Secures Strategic Funding from AMD, Qualcomm Ventures, and IonQ
- Classiq Technologies Ltd.'s quantum algorithms were executed on IonQ Inc.'s quantum hardware and simulated with AMD Instinct GPUs.
- Classiq announced a strategic funding round of tens of millions of dollars from AMD Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, IonQ, and other investors.
- IonQ said the partnership with Classiq will help them build customer applications together.
- Amazon Braket + Rigetti Computing actor–actor
- Amazon Braket Launches Program Sets to Accelerate Quantum Algorithm Execution
- Rigetti Releases 108-Qubit Cepheus-1-108Q System via Cloud Platforms
- Conductor Quantum Launches CODA MCP to Integrate Quantum Tools with AI Agents
- Rigetti Computing made Cepheus-1-108Q generally available on Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services and Amazon Braket.
- Rigetti deployed Cepheus-1-108Q on Amazon Braket as the first gate-based quantum device over 100 qubits on AWS.
- Alice & Bob + quantum error correction topic–actor
- Alice & Bob Joins €4.6M MSCA-Backed QuBriC Doctoral Network for Quantum Error Correction
- MSCA-backed QuBriC brings Alice & Bob into Europe’s quantum error correction push
- This Is Not a Product Launch: Alice & Bob Deploys On-Premise “Helium” Platform for Co-Design Cat-Qubit Research
- Alice & Bob Introduce ‘Elevator Codes’ for Resource-Efficient Fault Tolerance
- Alice & Bob joined QuBriC, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network focused on quantum error correction.
Groups of topics the press tends to cover together — the shape of the domain's coverage neighborhoods.
Line weight = articles covering the pair together (full measured record).
Line weight = articles covering the pair together (full measured record).
Line weight = articles covering the pair together (full measured record).
D-Wave Quantum Inc and Xanadu gained 1.6 and 1.5 percentage points, extending the rotation beyond the two largest gainers rather than concentrating edge attention in one subject. Both sit outside the ML-KEM cluster, so edge momentum is widening parallel threads rather than merely enlarging the central cryptography grouping.
The full set this report measures, ranked by share of the lens's coverage. Topic share = that topic's measured articles divided by the sum of every lens topic's measured articles. An article covering several lens topics counts once for each of them, so shares measure attention to topics — not exclusive slices of unique articles. Lens entries are coverage topics, not mutually exclusive market participants — a company, its products and its models can each be topics, and their coverage overlaps. Share is never market share, adoption, or importance.
Show all 40 topics
- OT Security Guidance: NIST Drafts Updated Guide, CISA/FBI Advise on ICS Integrators
- Engineering Multipole Resonances in Dielectric Metasurfaces for Transmission, Reflection, and Absorption Control
- Chip Industry Week In Review
- New Definition For Scalable Logical Qubits Could Advance Quantum Computing
- US Department of Energy Releases National Quantum Roadmap Establishing 2028 Fault-Tolerance Milestones
- IonQ: There Is One CPU To Rule Error Correction Decoding
Show all 32 cited sources
- IonQ Demonstrates Quantum Generative Modeling Advantage for High-Resolution Satellite Radar Change Detection
- Project Eleven Acquires Riva Labs to Scale Post-Quantum Cryptography and Blockchain Infrastructure Stack
- JDK 27: The quiet before the storm
- IBM and ETH Zurich collaborate on quantum computer to be hosted in Lugano, Switzerland
- This “Atomic Cannon” Could Challenge Einstein’s Theory of Gravity
- Why Treasuries Are ‘Risky’ Again
- The Silicon Heartland Wants To Be America’s Next Chip Powerhouse
- Quantinuum and The University of Western Australia Partner to Advance Australia’s Hybrid Quantum-AI-HPC Ecosystem
- Sandia, Quantinuum, and NVIDIA Introduce QUOPS Framework to Benchmark Physical and Logical Quantum Performance
- UCLA, Caltech, and NVIDIA Develop Fourier Neural Operator for Quantum Control Sequence Synthesis
- ‘Slop mathematics’: OpenAI walks away from a Caltech AI maths contest
- IQM to deploy Spark quantum computer at Brazil’s Eldorado Research Institute
- IQM Expands to South America with On-Premises QPU Sale to Brazil’s Eldorado Research Institute
- Former X-Force hackers chase the offensive cyber gold rush
- There's a New Way to Break RSA Encryption
- Improving Quantum Error Correction By Meshing Surface Code With IBM’s Heavy-Hex Architecture
- Classiq Launches Fault Tolerance Engine for Hardware-Aware Quantum Application Synthesis
- Chip Industry Week in Review
- Will Superconducting Transistors Help Quantum Computers?
- EU watchdogs warn quantum computers could pick crypto’s locks
- OpenSSL Fixes High-Severity DTLS Flaw That Can Leak Heap Memory Unencrypted
- High-Severity Vulnerabilities Patched in OpenSSL, WolfSSL
- Discord adds end-to-end encryption to voice and video calls by default
- Cold TAKE: Amazon's New Encryption Method Still Doesn't Deliver Real Privacy
- Infleqtion And Nvidia Reduce Physical-to-Logical Qubit Ratio in Quantum Computers
- Infleqtion supplies Japanese research team with QPU for neutral-atom quantum computer
Post-Quantum Security coverage is broadly spread, but recent attention is rotating from NIST and explicit encryption topics across several named subjects while ML-KEM, RSA and Shor’s algorithm hold its strongest connective thread together.
Every figure is drawn from the Enginerds corpus — a curated panel of technology outlets, each read at the same steady pace over time — and is a measurement of coverage within this lens: article counts, each topic's share of the set's coverage over time, the direction of that coverage, and which topics are covered together. Titles are shown as published; inclusion is not endorsement.
Topic share = that topic's measured articles divided by the sum of every lens topic's measured articles. An article covering several lens topics counts once for each of them, so shares measure attention to topics — not exclusive slices of unique articles. Lens entries are coverage topics, not mutually exclusive market participants — a company, its products and its models can each be topics, and their coverage overlaps.
Movement is each topic's share of the lens's coverage in the last 3 months versus the 3 months before that, in percentage points (pp). Topics shifting less than 0.2 pp are steady.
Pairings are ranked by connection strength: distinctiveness weighted by how many confirmed events link the pair and how far apart the two topics sit in the field, with a company's own product-family pairs set aside. So a pair can rank above another that shows a higher raw distinctiveness score or more shared articles — each card carries both numbers. Distinctiveness is normalized co-occurrence (NPMI, −1 to 1): how much more often the pair shares stories than the two topics' separate coverage volumes alone would predict. Big topics co-occur often by volume alone; a high score means the pairing itself is the pattern.
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Compass measures a dated, source-linked corpus of technology coverage — a curated panel of 140+ sources, each read at the same steady pace, month after month. Most are established outlets and specialist publications. The rest are channels that companies and projects run themselves, and those are counted separately. Every measurement opens back to the cited articles behind it.
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