PQCA discovers, inventories and quantum-risk-assesses the cryptography running across your entire estate — producing an evidence-based Cryptographic Bill of Materials, modeling harvest-now-decrypt-later exposure, pricing the risk in your own currency, and turning it all into a phased, quantum-resistant migration roadmap. It runs on-premise and air-gapped: its only vendor-chosen outbound calls are an optional exchange-rate refresh and the Proxy tab’s connection test, both admin-triggered; every other connection goes only to the hosts or cloud regions you configure — the map of your cryptographic weaknesses never leaves your network.
What you get
No single scan sees every place cryptography lives, so PQCA combines complementary evidence paths — and stays honest about what it could not see.
114 default probes per host — 101 TCP ports and 13 UDP probes — with real handshakes across TLS, STARTTLS, SSH, databases, SMB, RDP, Kerberos, OT/ICS, IoT and mainframe services, and full accepted-cipher-suite enumeration. A full TCP 1–65535 sweep and a UDP sweep run host by host on demand, and only inside the scan scope you authorize. An unreachable host is reported as unreachable, never as clean.
The PQC readiness probe sends a TLS 1.3 ClientHello offering the hybrid and pure ML-KEM groups and records what the server picks: hybrid, pure post-quantum or classical. Windows and Linux endpoint sensors sample each host’s connection table every 30 seconds — no packet capture, no driver — to find flows a network scan cannot reach, and report the host’s certificate stores once a day.
18 read-only integrations: AWS KMS, Google Cloud KMS, Azure Key Vault and Managed HSM, AWS CloudHSM, Thales Luna and any PKCS#11 HSM through the HSM sensor; Microsoft Entra ID, SailPoint, Okta, Keycloak, OIDC and SAML identity providers; CyberArk, BeyondTrust and Delinea privileged-access vaults; HashiCorp Vault and CyberArk Conjur. Metadata only — key values and secret contents are never retrieved.
Certificates found on services sit beside the ones your sources hold: CBOM files, Qualys Certificate View, DigiCert CertCentral and Trust Lifecycle Manager, Entrust CA Gateway, Windows CA through the CA sensor, the hosts’ own certificate stores through the endpoint sensor, and certificates found by key and identity discovery. Expiry, ownership, trust and renewal evidence are tracked in one register.
Source and configuration scanning finds hard-coded cryptography and secrets (values always masked in evidence), and ties key sizes to the algorithms they configure in Python, Java, C#, JavaScript and TypeScript. Encrypted files are recognized in 28 container formats, with an entropy check for anything opaque. Packet captures your team supplies are parsed offline; PQCA does not capture live traffic.
Import CycloneDX SBOMs and CBOMs, SARIF results and key-list exports. Stay in step with the asset inventory you already keep: pull from ServiceNow CMDB, NetBox/Nautobot, Qualys, Nessus and Active Directory, use a watched-folder CSV pickup for offline sites, or push through a scoped importer key. Existing asset records are never overwritten unless you opt in.
The CBOM records discovered network and certificate cryptography. Code, file and packet-capture findings sit in their own lane.
Inside PQCA
PQCA runs the full quantum-readiness lifecycle in one sovereign platform → discover, inventory, assess, plan and prove. Each module below is part of one integrated platform.
How it works
Coverage
Harvest-now-decrypt-later risk is modeled on Mosca’s inequality against a quantum horizon you configure — so the migration deadline is your data’s, not a vendor’s.
22 regulatory frameworks · 86 individually scored controls · 43 dated milestones on the live clock. ISO/IEC and IETF coverage is ISO/IEC 18033-2 Amendment 2 (FrodoKEM, Classic McEliece, ML-KEM) and the IETF TLS hybrid key-exchange drafts, including the X25519MLKEM768 codepoint PQCA probes for on the wire. For FIPS 140-3 specifically, PQCA tracks your plan to move onto CMVP-certified modules. It does not validate modules, and it is not a substitute for CMVP.
Inventory flows in from the systems that already know your assets; findings flow out to the queues your teams already work; and the same scanner gates code before it ships. No new silo, no swivel-chair.
PQCA stays in step with your asset inventory. Pull connectors for ServiceNow CMDB, NetBox/Nautobot, Qualys, Nessus and Active Directory; a watched-folder CSV channel for air-gapped estates — your CMDB exports, PQCA imports and archives; and scoped API keys for push automation, where the importer role can call exactly one endpoint and nothing else. Existing asset records are never overwritten unless you opt in.
Findings become ServiceNow, Jira or ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus tickets (on-premises or Cloud) carrying full remediation playbooks. Ticket status syncs back onto the finding every 15 minutes, and — opt-in — a genuinely resolved ticket closes its finding. Dismissed tickets (Won’t Do, Cancelled) never count as remediation, and a person’s closure is never overwritten. Status sync-back covers all three; Slack and generic webhooks are push-only.
The same scanner, in your pipeline: a zero-dependency pip package, a single-file pqca.pyz for locked-down endpoints, or a standalone executable. SARIF output annotates pull requests; a --fail-on gate blocks quantum-broken cryptography at build time. Fully offline — no server, no network.
Banking groups and regional holdings answer for several licensed entities at once. A Master PQCA links each subsidiary, reads its posture on a schedule and reports the group side by side — while every subsidiary’s data stays in its own install. This is federation — many separate installs reporting upward to a parent — not multi-tenant isolation inside one install.
A Master PQCA links each subsidiary and reads its posture on a schedule, so the group view is current without a quarterly collection exercise.
Group exposure, mean readiness, the weakest entity and the soonest mandate — every entity reported side by side, so the board sees where the group stands and which subsidiary sets the pace.
A subsidiary is read live from its own PQCA, or from a CBOM it uploads — either way it takes its place in the same group view.
Every subsidiary’s data stays in its own install, sovereign to its jurisdiction and data-residency rules — the Master reads posture and reports the group.
Licensed per number of linked subsidiaries.
PQCA is a system of record, so the changes that move a risk position do not take effect because one person clicked save. On 26 governed surfaces in 9 groups a Maker proposes and a Checker (or another administrator) decides, and the proposal, the decision, the decider and the before-and-after state are all recorded.
The control itself; findings and risk (risk acceptance, offline findings); certificates and keys (certificate acceptance, hiding or deleting, trusted CAs, held retirements, removing sources); what the platform measures (crypto policy, algorithm overrides, quantum horizon, financial model, applied frameworks); what it may scan (the scan scope); the migration plan and its review; endpoint sensor identity; data and history (restore, history clearing, evidence deletion); and administrator actions. A proposer never approves their own change. Segregation of duties over cryptographic policy and risk acceptance is what an internal audit function tests for, and what turns a scanner into evidence.
Every bank carries findings it cannot remediate this year. What supervision tests is whether the exception was authorised, by whom, with what compensating control, and when it expires. PQCA records that as a first-class object with attachments and an expiry date — proposed by a Maker, approved by a Checker, and surfaced again when it lapses.
An allowlist of the targets the platform may probe, with exclusions, enforced on every scan, schedule, rescan and readiness test; changing it is a four-eyes change, and every refusal is audited.
A network scan sees what it can route to. It misses outbound connections from behind NAT, sessions too short to catch, and every host on a segment it has no path into. PQCA ships a lightweight endpoint sensor for Windows and Linux that closes that gap — and it is built to pass a change advisory board, not to fight one.
It samples the operating system’s own connection table every 30 seconds, attributes each flow to the owning process, and once a day reports the host’s posture and the certificates in its stores (never a private key). No payload data ever leaves the endpoint.
On Windows it installs as a Scheduled Task from a single .exe (or PowerShell); on Linux as a systemd service from one shell command. Estates enforcing application control (WDAC, Smart App Control) allow-list the unsigned executable or sign it with their own certificate — see Deployment below.
It authenticates with a scoped service key confined to its own endpoints, and reports only to its own TLS port (9843), never the console port — so a compromised sensor cannot read your inventory.
Traffic records are capped at 60 days; the dependency map they build is kept for the sensor’s life.
Reads an AD CS database read-only every 15 minutes; each CA arrives as an offer an administrator enables or declines.
Read-only PKCS#11 inventory with the vendor’s client: 15 allowed functions, 31 metadata attributes, never a key value. The PIN never leaves the host.
Added value
Discovery and a CBOM are the mechanism. This is what proving control of your cryptography is worth to the business.
Turn “we think we’re fine” into a signed Cryptographic Bill of Materials and a readiness score you can put in front of a regulator or board.
HNDL and financial-exposure scoring rank every weak algorithm by real business risk, so migration budget lands on the data that will actually be harvested.
Export CBOM, quantum-risk findings and a phased roadmap as board-ready evidence — not a slide deck assembled the week before the audit.
Runs fully on-premise and offline, so the most sensitive map of your estate — where its cryptography is weak — never leaves your control.
Regulatory fit
22 regulatory frameworks · 86 individually scored controls · 43 dated milestones on the live clock. The standards driving the post-quantum transition — and exactly how PQCA tracks and evidences your progress against each.
Benchmarks every discovered algorithm against the finalised ML-KEM, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA standards and flags what must be replaced.
Tracks progress toward the 2035 post-quantum mandate for national-security systems, algorithm by algorithm.
Federal civilian agencies move sooner than NSS: key establishment quantum-safe by end-2030 and digital signatures by end-2031, with agency migration plans due to OMB in October 2026. M-26-15 expressly excludes national-security systems.
Applies the deprecation timeline — RSA and ECC deprecated after 2030, disallowed after 2035 — so legacy crypto is retired on schedule.
Cryptographic-resilience evidence for financial entities under DORA, and product obligations under the Cyber Resilience Act.
ISO/IEC 18033-2 Amendment 2 (FrodoKEM, Classic McEliece, ML-KEM) and the IETF TLS hybrid key-exchange drafts, including the X25519MLKEM768 codepoint PQCA probes for on the wire. PQCA produces cryptographic-inventory evidence that supports an ISO 27001 control set; it does not assess or certify an ISMS.
SAMA’s binding milestones — cryptographic inventory and classification complete by 31 Dec 2026, institution-level quantum risk assessment by 31 Mar 2027 — alongside the UAE National Encryption Policy, Saudi NCA, Kuwait’s CBK resilience framework and the Central Bank of Jordan roadmap to 2035, plus NCSC Jordan’s draft National Quantum-Safe Program milestones (2027, 2028), scored natively with local-currency reporting. Saudi NCA is scored as general cryptographic-hygiene controls — NCA has published no post-quantum mandate; the Kingdom’s dated PQC milestones are SAMA’s.
National transition guidance mapped as first-class frameworks — UK NCSC, Germany’s BSI TR-02102-1, France’s ANSSI, Canada’s CCCS ITSM.40.001, the mandatory Treasury Board SPIN, OSFI’s quantum-readiness expectations for financial institutions, and Australia’s ASD ISM.
Documents cryptographic protection of cardholder data and surfaces weak cipher suites (Requirement 4).
HSM approvals tracked against the PTS timeline — v4 new-device approvals end mid-2027, and v5 is the first PTS revision to carry post-quantum requirements.
Most of PQCA’s compliance scoring tracks the progress you report against your own migration roadmap. Two things are different: they are computed from what your services actually negotiated on the wire, not from anything anyone attested. CNSA 2.0 suite conformance is measured estate-wide from real findings. Hybrid-versus-pure key-exchange verdicts are measured per endpoint and judged against the jurisdiction you selected — because ANSSI, BSI, ASD and CNSA 2.0 genuinely disagree about whether a hybrid construction is acceptable, and a single global verdict would be wrong for someone. Everything else on the compliance screen is a tracking view of self-attested roadmap progress, and the platform says so on the screen itself.
A scanner that quietly retires a service it failed to reach manufactures compliance progress. PQCA distinguishes not vulnerable from not observed, and an unreachable target is recorded as unreachable — never as resolved. In a regulated institution the difference is a reportable control failure.
Risk mitigation
“Harvest now, decrypt later” is happening today. Here is what the quantum threat looks like without PQCA — and with it.
No inventory of where cryptography actually runs — TLS, SSH, certificates, code and files are a blind spot.
A complete, deduplicated Cryptographic Bill of Materials across the estate, refreshed on every scan.
Long-life secrets are being captured now for decryption once a quantum computer exists.
HNDL exposure modelled per dataset, so the data with the longest shelf life is re-encrypted first.
Migration is an open-ended, unbudgeted scramble as deadlines approach.
A phased, budgeted roadmap prioritized by quantum risk and financial impact.
Regulators ask for crypto-agility evidence you cannot produce.
Signed CBOM, risk scores and roadmap exportable on demand.
The estate drifts — new weak algorithms creep back in unnoticed.
Snapshots and drift-diff flag every regression against the approved baseline.
Deployment & security
Every Terashield platform deploys inside your environment and stays under your control → hardened, directory-integrated, and audit-ready from day one.
PQCA runs as one process with one scheduler. There is no clustering, high availability or failover; recovery is a restore from your last backup, so set RTO and RPO expectations around your backup cadence. A bank asks this early — a straight answer builds more trust than a gap.
Backup and restore run from the admin console — which matters in air-gapped sites where the application team is not granted a database shell. Back up in full or configuration-only; archives from older versions are brought forward on restore. A restore is itself a governed, four-eyes change.
No activation server, no phone-home, no evaluation timer. A license is an Ed25519-signed file bound to the machine and renewed by email attachment. License places count only assets a scan got an answer from — imports, sensors, keys and identity objects are free. An expired license turns the platform read-only; nothing is deleted.
Every scan, score, export and decision is written to an audit trail the application only ever appends to, with the acting user, the timestamp and the before-and-after state. It is not hash-chained; a full restore keeps the live trail and adds the archive’s entries, so forward it to your SIEM if you need tamper-evidence held outside the platform.
Endpoint sensors: the Windows sensor .exe ships unsigned. An endpoint estate enforcing application control — WDAC or Smart App Control — must allow-list it, or sign it with the customer’s own code-signing certificate before rollout. Plan for this before a pilot, not during one.
Request a private briefing — bring a subnet or a packet capture and see real findings, real risk and a roadmap draft in 30 minutes. Nothing leaves your network.
Straight answers on scope, deadlines and what PQCA does and does not do.
No. PQCA discovers and assesses cryptography, tracks readiness and produces a phased migration roadmap. Your teams and vendors carry out the changes.
Adversaries capture encrypted data today and store it to decrypt once a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer exists. Records that must stay secret for 10–20 years are already at risk, so long-lived data needs post-quantum protection now. PQCA quantifies this exposure per asset using Mosca's inequality.
Yes — you cannot migrate cryptography you cannot see. PQCA builds an evidence-based CycloneDX Cryptographic Bill of Materials (CBOM) from real handshakes, packet captures, files and configuration across TLS, SSH, OT, mainframe and data at rest.
PQCA uses bounded, read-only discovery probes and lets administrators define and enforce scan scope. Scan only systems you own or are authorized to assess. Unreachable hosts stay identified as unreachable, not treated as clean.
Those are analyzed as separate findings sources. Packet captures are supplied by your team and parsed offline; PQCA does not perform live packet capture.
NIST finalized the post-quantum standards FIPS 203, 204 and 205 in 2024. The NSA's CNSA 2.0, the EU (DORA and the Cyber Resilience Act) and national regulators set migration milestones from 2026 through 2035. PQCA tracks each mandate as a live countdown tagged by legal weight.
SAMA’s circular sets two binding milestones for banks, credit-information companies, finance companies, payment-services providers and licensed financing-support entities: cryptographic asset inventory and classification complete by 31 December 2026, and an institution-level quantum risk assessment with work plans by 31 March 2027. It is the soonest binding post-quantum milestone in the Gulf.
Two are measured from what services actually negotiated on the wire: CNSA 2.0 suite conformance (estate-wide) and hybrid-versus-pure key-exchange verdicts (per endpoint, per jurisdiction). Everything else on the compliance screen is a tracking view of self-attested migration-roadmap progress across 22 frameworks and 86 controls — and the platform says so on the screen.
No. For FIPS 140-3 specifically, PQCA tracks your plan to move onto CMVP-certified modules. It does not validate modules, and it is not a substitute for CMVP. Its FIPS 140-3 framework is a migration-progress tracker scored on self-attested roadmap progress.
It does not validate or certify modules, assess or certify an ISO 27001 ISMS, retrieve key material or secret values (key and identity discovery is read-only and metadata-only), provide multi-tenant isolation inside one install (group reporting is federation of separate installs), or offer clustering, high availability or failover — recovery is a restore from backup. Its audit trail is application-appended, not hash-chained.
PQCA has no telemetry, license check-in or update poll. It picks only two destinations itself, and both wait for an administrator: an optional exchange-rate refresh, replaceable by manual rates (ten offline fallback rates ship), and the Proxy tab’s connection test. Every other connection — ITSM and chat, read-only cloud key and identity connectors, CMDB pulls, federation reads, SMTP, SIEM syslog/CEF, Active Directory — goes only to the hosts or cloud regions you configure, and none is contacted until you enable it. The web console loads nothing from the internet, and air-gapped deployments can use offline workflows.
No. PQCA runs entirely on your own hardware — Docker, offline Docker tarball, or a native Windows service — air-gapped, with no telemetry; its only self-chosen outbound calls are an optional exchange-rate refresh and the Proxy tab’s connection test, both admin-triggered.
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