SIKE emerged to prominence after making it one of four additional candidates being considered by NIST after the organization last month officially announced the four algorithms that will replace the currently-used RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman [ECDH] algorithms. Most of the globe’s cybersecurity stands on these algorithms, which have been invaluable in securing information against bad actors - when they aren’t compromised by other means. But they have a fundamental issue: they’ll be easily bested once quantum computers scale enough. And that’s not a matter of “if” anymore: it’s a matter of “when.”

“When” is expected to occur within this decade,

Signal Protocol uses ECDH to obtain post-compromise security. Implementations of this protocol are found in Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype.