NIST Says RSA and ECDSA Will Be Deprecated After 2030 and Disallowed After 2035

NIST has published Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards, NIST IR 8547, which says quantum-vulnerable public-key cryptography will be deprecated after 2030 and disallowed after 2035.

The report is dated October 2026. Its algorithm table lists ECDSA and RSA at 112 and 128 bits of classical security strength as deprecated after 2030 and disallowed after 2035. NIST says earlier guidance had projected disallowing 112-bit public-key schemes on January 1, 2031. It now plans to deprecate all quantum-vulnerable digital signature algorithms after 2030 and disallow them after 2035, and organizations may keep using them while they migrate to the post-quantum signatures the report lists.

Federal systems face earlier dates. National Security Memorandum 10 set 2035 as the target for finishing the federal migration, and NIST says that goal stands. Executive Order 14412 and OMB Memorandum M-26-15 require high value assets and high impact systems to adopt post-quantum cryptography for key establishment by December 31, 2030, and for digital signatures by December 31, 2031. The report adds that agencies must support TLS 1.3 no later than January 2, 2030.

NIST writes that earlier cryptographic transitions took 10 to 20 years from standardization to full integration, and ties that length to companies building algorithms into products, buyers procuring them and teams integrating them into infrastructure. It tells organizations to start with cryptographic inventories, migration planning and early deployments of products that support post-quantum cryptography. It cites the threat that adversaries collect encrypted data today to decrypt once quantum technology matures as a main reason for urgency.

In our reading, security leaders outside government get the same dates through their vendors, because NIST places the timing of any upgrade partly in the supply chain. A useful first request is a written date from each vendor for post-quantum support in the products that hold long-lived data. The CISA 2030 strategy and the compromised eMudhra intermediate certificate keys both show how much depends on certificate and key inventory.

Source: NIST IR 8547